After asking all our questions, we decided it was best to focus on the amount of freshwater on the Earth. Just because we highlighted water on the maps, doesn't mean we really know how much that water represents, so students are using some real data and representing the fresh water vs. the salt water's quantities on Earth. If we're also worried about people's access to water, maybe they actually have enough near them and there's nothing to worry about!
Here's our 2D thinking of this really important comparison!
Here's our 2D thinking of this really important comparison!
And then we discussed how representing water as an area model would NOT be a good representing since water is actually 3-dimensional. So we brought out some water and did some volume-measuring to see the difference on a scaled level.
And then we were like "WAIT! That's really not a lot of freshwater available compared to salt water."
So we did more research to see where all the freshwater on the Earth is, since we see a lake, but some folks in the country don't see any water. And maybe they get their water from somewhere else. So here's what we found and modeled two-dimensionally of all the fresh water on the Earth:
So we did more research to see where all the freshwater on the Earth is, since we see a lake, but some folks in the country don't see any water. And maybe they get their water from somewhere else. So here's what we found and modeled two-dimensionally of all the fresh water on the Earth:
That only a really, really, really small amount of freshwater is found in lakes, rivers and swamps. The VAST majority (and almost all of it) is underground or in glaciers!!! WHAT!?!?!?!?!
This made us really think about the fresh water that is made available to us that we can physically see. We know we don't live near glaciers or ice caps, but we're curious about groundwater.
- Where is groundwater?
- Is it at different depths?
- Why do some places have groundwater and others don't?
- How do they get groundwater out of the ground?
- How do they clean groundwater?