How deep can you dig ?
10th May 2018
We have a construction in progress, that we see when we look out of our apartment. We see big diggers digging deep holes in the ground and bulldozers and wreckers and so many amazing construction vehicles. Watching them, my 4 year old asked me an interesting question, How deep do the diggers dig? Do they remove HALF Of the earth? So today we are going to learn how deep the earth is and how deep we can dig!
First thing that we need to know is that the earth is really really big. It would take 60,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 average people to have the same mass as Earth. Yes it is HUGE. If the earth was the size of Mt Everest we are the size of a salt grain! Unimaginable.
It may seem like the earth is made up of just one material but the earth has many layers.
As we go deeper into the earth, the temperature keeps getting higher and higher. The core is now estimated at 6,000 C
Scishow kids compares the earth to an an egg which is a perfect comparison. The outer crust is like the shell of the egg. The white is like the mantle and the cores are like the yolk!
The crust is where we live. As you can see it is very thin compared to the other layers of the earth but the crust is 5km to 50km deep!
If you try digging into the earth you can probably work really really hard and dig 2 feet deep with a shovel!
A house with a basement starts with a hole about 8 feet deep.
The foundation for sky scrapers is sometimes around 50 meters!
This seems like a very deep hole, but when compared to the depth of the core of the Earth, it is just scratching the surface. The Earth is approximately 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers) from surface to center.
FUN FACT :The deepest hole that was dug is the Kola Superdeep Borehole at 12 km deep and had to be stopped because it got so hot that the tools stopped woking
Watch this amazing video that shows how deep humans have dug.
Take a quiz on how deep can you dig?
- Activity :Build the earth from the inside out with play doh.
- Activity: Earth is much more than just the surface we see every day, make this Earth layer fan from spaceplace NASA
- Lesson and activity on structure of the earth.
- Foldable earth pdf from mjksciteachingideas
- Make your Dinosaur Dig excavation activity.
- Dirt Lab: Preschool science projects exploring dirt and mud