Shoebox Groundwater Model

A lesson plan to teach geology to your students!

Help students learn firsthand about the connection between surface water and groundwater. Using a plastic shoebox, sand, and a turkey baster, students will see how water enters and moves through an aquifer.

For the full Lesson Plan: https://wgnhs.uwex.edu/education-reso...

Free to download!


What to do?

1. Fill half of the shoebox with sand and gravel.

2. Make sure that the top of the sand is sloped and has a depression in one corner (for a lake). This represents the land surface sloping toward a lake.

3. Place a plastic house, animal, etc. on the “land surface.” This makes the shoebox into a “model.”

4. Poke many small holes into the bottom and sides of the plastic cup and mark rings inside the cup about ½ inch apart.

5. Scoop a small depression in the gravel and place the cup into the gravel to nearly the bottom of the box. This cup is going to represent a high-capacity water-supply well.

6. Use your turkey baster to sprinkle water on the surface, representing rainfall. Then, add more water (with the baster) near the hill. Water sprinkled on the surface models precipitation, the source of groundwater.

7. Slowly fill the shoebox and gravel with water until the lake in the opposite corner starts to fill. Be careful not to pour water too quickly! Sometimes it takes a long time for water to move through the gravel to the other side of the shoebox. When water moves down into the gravel from above, this is infiltration. When water moves sideways to fill up the gravel in the shoebox, this is called percolation. Groundwater often moves very slowly.

8. Mark the side of the box at the top of the lake and mark the other side at the top of the water in the sand and gravel (the water table). Look into the well (plastic cup) and mark the water level on the inside of the well.

9. Refill the turkey baster and then add that water to the “hill side” of the shoebox to simulate recharge of the aquifer. Note what happens to the water level in the lake and in the well.

10. Use your turkey baster to remove more water from the plastic cup than you added in step 9. This step represents what happens when you pump water out of the aquifer. Watch and note what happens to the water level in the lake and in the well.

Song Used: Italian Afternoon
Italian Afternoon by Twin Musicom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...)
Artist: http://www.twinmusicom.org/