Get Outside for STEM

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Some of my fondest memories from my school days are the warm spring days when we got to take the classroom outside! In college, my favorite geology classes always included afternoon or weekend field trips. Fortunately, most geology undergraduate degrees culminate with a 5+ week field camp! I would argue, that geology provides the best opportunity to get outside and flex your STEM muscles! Here are 5 geology-based outdoor STEM activities your kids will love!

SCIENCE

Geologic Mapping is a highly interpretive, scientific process that will require your child to make field observations, interpret their significance, and draw features on their map. For this activity, you will need paper, a clipboard, and colored pencils. I love to take this activity to one of our local parks that has several hiking trails to explore. To start, I make a rough sketch of the park and trails (trust me you don’t have to be an artist and it doesn’t have to be to scale). I give this map to my kiddo and we start exploring! We set out to draw interesting terrain features by adding contour lines to our map and rock features (we also map everything from trees to squirrel nests!)

Learn land features in the sandbox! There is no better piece of playground equipment to teach kids about landforms and geomorphology than a sandbox! We spend countless hours building up landforms and then carving and observing using sandbox toys and/or the water hose! With this activity, I will typically build a large ‘mountain’ on one side of our sandbox. We then add water via the garden hose and discuss how the water can erode and carry the sand particles from the top of the mountain. As time passes, we observe as the water carves steep canyon walls and eventually cracks begin to form and slopes begin to fail! On the other end of the sandbox, we observe and discuss how the sediments are being deposited. You can spend hours upon hours making observations and discussing how various landforms are created!

TECHNOLOGY

Geologists rely heavily on GPS technologies to communicate their findings. Geocaching is a popular treasure hunting game that teaches you to use GPS. According to www.geocaching.com there are millions of geocaches hidden around the world. Simply download the official GeoCaching® app on your mobile device and get ready to explore!

ENGINEERING

Get back in the sandbox to learn about the angle of repose! The angle of repose is the steepest angle that a material can be piled without the material sliding. This angle varies for different materials. For this sandbox experiment, we use a plastic cup and a ruler. First, we scoop the sand with our cup and start pouring our pile of sand. After one or two pours, we take the ruler and record both the width and height of our pile. We repeat these steps several times pausing occasionally to take measurements.

MATH

Ready to crunch some numbers? From the angle of repose exercise, it is time to calculate the percent of slope and angle of slope for the sand piles. To calculate the percent of the slope, divide the change in height by one-half the change in width of the pile (often referred to as “the rise over the run”), and then multiply by 100. So if your first pile was 4 inches tall and 18 inches wide, your calculation would be 4 divided by 9 (remember for the width we measured the diameter but for the calculation of our slope we are looking at one side of the pile). The percent of the slope would be 44%. To calculate the angle of slope, divide the “rise over the run” and then take the inverse tangent of the calculation. So, the inverse tangent of 4 divided by 9 provides us with an angle of slope (or angle of repose) of 25 degrees. Repeat this calculation with your other measurements and not if the percent of slope or angle of repose changed.

Map of our favorite park!