Soil and Erosion - Project Blog

                              This was our Ignite Presentation.

Summary

Erosion is the movement of weather rocks. The main forces in erosion are water. Water can cause lots of types of erosion like landslides. The Laguna Beach Landslide occurred on June 2, 2005, at Laguna Beach, California. The landslide started on a steep hill. As it traveled down, the landslide destroyed the homes at the bottom of the hill. 11 houses were destroyed. So, what caused the landslide? A landslide needs three components... Water, soil, and incline. First, it rains and the water accumulates in the soil. Accumulate means gradually build up. Second, because the soil is not permeable, the water starts to become too much for the soil to soak through fast enough. Because of this, the two just mix together. This creates a super runny hill of liquid soil. The third step of this process is where the incline comes in. Because the hill is so steep, the liquid soil runs down into the houses loosening the friction between the two. Finally, the soil and homes are sliding down a hill creating a landslide.

Backward-Looking

Before I started to study this topic, I already knew a bit about erosion. This is because last year in Science we studied weathering and erosion. However, I only knew a little bit about weathering and erosion and not much detail about landslides specifically. My group's case study was on the Laguna Beach landslide. I have never heard of this landslide before. I also didn't know what causes a landslide. The only thing I did know was that a landslide is when a large amount of dirt, rock, and basically anything that gets pulled down and slides down a steep hill or mountain.

Inward-Looking

During this project, I was proud of the work my group and I presented. I feel like my presentation was interesting as well as informative and that my group and I did a good job. The reason why I believe this is because we included lots of facts as well as even made a diagram to put on our slides. Our script even had a joke to keep the audience entertained. One thing that I disliked was that we were still dependent on the script while presenting even though we still tried to keep eye contact. Overall, I enjoyed presenting and had fun.

Outward-Looking

I think that our presentation and work was different than other projects. This is because we really tried to keep our script entertaining by adding jokes and funny parts. Most of the other scripts and presentations were very simple and full of only facts. Also, we didn't worry about the timing on our sides. Some groups had to pause and wait for their slides to change because their scripting was too short. I also noticed when I looked at other groups script that theirs was a lot shorter than ours. Our script was basically 2.2 pages while theirs was only 1. We were also the only group with a diagram.

Forward-Looking

The main thing I would like to improve on is being able to present without a script in my hands. This is because without having to look at a script, you can look at the audience and engage them more with eye contact. When I watched the other presenters, I noticed that when they had a script they tended to not have eye contact. Also, I would like to have practiced presenting with my group more. This is because sometimes while we would practice, one of us would stumble on some words or space out. If we just practiced more in general, our presentation would have been a lot better.