Free Technology for Teachers: Why Does the Road Crack?

One particular of my favored points to do these days is to ride bikes with my daughters. From time to time I even record those people rides on Strava due to the fact my more mature daughter now wants to continue to keep monitor of how quick she can go down a small area of street in our neighborhood (present history 10.5mph). When we were being using previously this 7 days she complained about the cracks in the pavement in a single element of our neighborhood and asked, “why does the street crack?” 

I did my most effective to reply my daughter’s query of “why does the street crack?” by conveying that there is a large amount of h2o in the floor in our area. When that water freezes it expands and pushes up on the pavement which then makes it crack. She’s 6, so I’m not confident she rather acquired it even when I produced the analogy to a single of our clay backyard pots cracking for the exact same purpose final wintertime. 

As I pretty much usually do when my daughters inquire me a query that I have not thought about in a lengthy time, I turned to YouTube in search of a visual clarification of why roadways crack in the winter season. Right after a small seeking I located this movie from the Minnesota Office of Transportation. Jump to the 1:14 mark in the movie to see an previous visible of what occurs when wet soil freezes. 

https://www.youtube.com/view?v=fkrrSys03qQ

This matter is a fantastic 1 for an animated clarification. University student can use some simple animation tools to produce an clarification of what transpires when drinking water and or soil freezes and pushes up from a preset or rigid object. Sign-up for my new Animated Explanations class to master how to generate and use animated explanations in your classroom.