Mechanical and Chemical Weathering - Autobiography of a Rock
This week you will be writing a brief autobiography of a rock. You will be writing about the interesting life of a rock, telling about its experiences with chemical and mechanical weathering (abrasion, acid in living things, acid precipitation, ice wedging, and oxidation).
Here is a sample autobiography. You may not use this sample for you assignment:
Hi there, I'm Grant Stone. In my youth, I was part of a much larger rock on the side of a mountain. In the summer, small trickles of water would enter cracks in my surface; in the winter the water would freeze. The cracks grew larger, until I eventually broke off the granite face. As I fell off the mountain, I cause a rock slide. There were hundreds of rocks, large and small, rolling down the mountain. We were bumping into each other and sliding all over. It was a regular rock stampede! I stopped at the base of the mountain, on top of the pile of rocks I spent many years there, and gradually, a colony of lichen began growing on my side. They were easy to live with, but where the lichen grew, my edges became less sharp. In one of my journeys, I met some rocks that were a beautiful red color. They told me they were made with a lot of iron, and the iron helped to cause their red coloration. One winter, the mountain had a much larger snowfall than usual, and the spring was stormy, with lots of rain. The rain and snowmelt caused a flood, and I found myself in the bottom of a river being jostled among more rocks and rubbed by silt. Over time, that river changed course, and I was left in the open. In recent decades, I've started to crumble a little at the edges. I'm not sure what causes it, but I think it has something to do with the rain - the rain seems to do much more damage to me than it used to.
Expectations: I am looking for an autobiography that addresses the six agents of weathering: abrasion, acid in living things, acid precipitation, ice wedging and oxidation. At the end of your autobiography you will list the six agents of erosion and how they are demonstrated in the autobiography, just like you did with your comic strip project.
You will be graded on: Mechanics, meaning capitalization, punctuation and the use of complete sentences. Topic - Ask yourself, is this on topic? Agents of weathering - Ask yourself, did I include all six agents? Accuracy - Did you properly identify the agents of weathering in your list?
How to Turn it in!: You may use any word processing program to complete this assignment (Microsoft word, pages, notability, Google Docs...). Be sure to email or share your work with me. I will also accept a printed copy of the assignment, nothing handwritten, thank you.