Page 40 - Resources
P. 40
Lessons 10-11
Read the following information then write a one A4 page newspaper on glaciers, writing
headlines and short pieces of information, with illustrations, on a separate sheet or on a
computer.
Glaciers are formed when enormous amounts of snow fall and pack down to form ice.
The cutting power of the ice becomes very powerful as it slowly moves down a valley or
hillside.
Moving rivers of ice are called glaciers. They move at different speeds. In the Alps
they often take three years to move one metre but in Greenland twenty metres a day is
common.
Glaciers begin in a hollow high up in a valley and they gouge out the rock. After the ice
melts this high basin shape, or corrie, is left often containing a small lake. One such
hollow can be seen on Helvellyn in Cumbria.
Gravity causes the weight of ice to slide down a valley high up on a mountain. Glaciers
cut roughly gouging out a U-shaped valley.
Sometimes the glaciers cut away at the hillside in parallel valleys so that the hill
separating them becomes so thin and narrow that it is called an arête. An example is
Striding Edge on Helvellyn.
A U-shaped valley
corrie glacier
Thousands of
A hanging valley is a small side valley cut by smaller glaciers. years ago there
was an ice age
Moraines are lines of rocks and stones carried down the when a quarter
mountains by glaciers. of the earth was
covered in ice.
(God's Amazing Landscapes) 48
