Where did the change begin?
Labs / Geography
Glacier Carves a Valley
Cool the climate and a glacier thickens, flows, and pushes down the valley; warm it and the ice melts back. As the ice grinds along, it slowly rasps the sharp river V into the broad, flat-bottomed U you see in glaciated highlands — and drops moraines wherever it stops. Drag up on the view to chill it, drag down to warm it.
Labs / Geography / Glacier Carves a Valley
Glacier Carves a Valley
Cool the climate and a glacier thickens, flows, and pushes down the valley; warm it and the ice melts back. As the ice grinds along, it slowly rasps the sharp river V into the broad, flat-bottomed U you see in glaciated highlands — and drops moraines wherever it stops. Drag up on the view to chill it, drag down to warm it.
Why it matters
Why explore this?
Geography explains how places, people, and Earth systems affect one another. This model lets you change one factor and watch its effects spread across space.
Explore
Try the model
length 0.00 kmthickness 0 mflow 0 m/yrshape V · 0%moraine —
Investigate
Questions to test
Predict first, try it in the model, then use what you observe to answer.
What to try
- How cold does it need to get before the ice reaches all the way down the valley?
- Flip on the cross-section. How long does the ice take to turn the V into a real U?
- Steepen the valley slope. Does faster, thinner ice carve more or less than slow, thick ice?
- Grow a long glacier, then warm the climate. Why does the terminal moraine stay put after the ice is gone?
- Where along the glacier is the ice thickest and fastest — and is that where the deepest carving happens?
Explain
Make sense of what happened
Connect the pattern to place: identify where the change begins, where its effects appear, and which process links those locations.
Check
Before you leave
What spatial pattern appeared?
Which process connects the cause and effect?
If you can answer all three using evidence from the model, you understand the main idea. If not, return to Explore and change one setting at a time.