ae.02 Looking more at systems

Content

• Statement of inquiry
  • Scientific and technical innovators need to understand how power affects the processes that occur within systems.
• Factual questions [Remembering facts and topics]
  • Define precipitation, accumulation, ablation, sublimation, basal melt, plucking and abrasion.
• Conceptual questions [Analysing big ideas]
  • What could happen when the inputs to a system change?
• Aims of this lesson
  • To further develop your knowledge and understanding of systems.
  • To look at glaciers as a system in more detail.
  • To start to explore the consequences of changing elements within a system.

Base knowledge and understanding

Context

Task 1 - A simple system

inputs | processes | outputs

Task 2 - Real life isn't a simple system!

Task 3 - Developing your understanding

Define these terms:

1. accumulation
2. precipitation
3. avalanche / avalanching
4. hoar frost
5. wind-blown snow
6. glacier flow
7. ablation
8. sublimation
9. meltwater
10. surface meltwater runoff
11. basal melt
12. subaerial melt
13. calving
14. subaqueous frontal melt
15. plucking
16. abrasion

Task 4 - Applying your understanding

Annotate the terms onto a single (top points) photograph of a glacial landscape (or maximum three photographs) to show your understanding of where these processes happen and where they take place.

Task 5 - Changes to the system

Explain how the inputs, processes and outputs would have had to change to cause these changes in the Aletsch glacier. [6]

Task 6 - Processes in action

Kahoot - Alpine environments - Systems vocabulary