The Story Of Palouse Falls

(Expalation from checkpoint 1): Geological processes change the Earth’s surface over time, let’s look at two examples: Erosion, and Physical weathering. Physical Weathering is the breaking down of rocks and soil into sediments, by wind, water, gravity, and ice. In lab number 1 we see this happening at a smaller, speeder scale, a sugar cube gets put into a tin box that had sandpaper on the sides, the box gets shaken for 3 minutes and then the sugar cube gets taken out. We see that the rough edges have worn away. Erosion causes these weathered sediments to were away, this happens because after the rocks are weathered down, the prosses of erosion moves them to a different location. In our lab, this example gets put into perspective in a way that we can tell what is happening better. In the lab, a sponge gets put in a bucket of water that has sand in it (the sand is acting as a beach), the sponge gets pushed back and forth for 30 seconds, as if it were the tide going in and out, we see that the beach has worn away because the water picked up loose sediments. These examples resemble two things in the real world, the sugar cube in a tin resembles a rock being changed by hundreds of years exposed to the wind, and the sponge in a bucket resembles a beach wearing away from the tide. I think that if we changed the time variable for the sugar cube and the wave, we would have different outcomes.

(Inference from checkpoint 2)I Infer that the Palouse Falls was formed because of weathering. I class we did a lab were, water was poured down “a mountainside”. The water carved put a crevasse much like the one in this photo. I think it was formed because of glacial flooding. I think this because according to Ivypanda, “The Palouse Falls …formed as a result of… heavy flooding…when the glacial Lake Missoula burst…” Let us go back, 14,000,000 years to see it formed.

This is Palouse falls before it was formed. The lake Missoula is as big as lake Erie and Ontario combined. The lake Missoula, is a glacial lake that had an ice dam. When that broke that is when the flooding happened.

When the ice dam broke, the ground was to dry to suck it up so it ran across the ground until falling into the Palouse River. The force of this course the basalt to ware away, 377 ft to be exact. the waterfall is the snake river running into the canyon and falling into the Palouse.