2 of 12

Purpose

To test how water and waves affect the erosion of the shoreline at the beach.

What happens when waves crash onto the sand?

Does headland effect these results?

3 of 12

Hypothesis

The more the waves crash on the shoreline the more sand is pulled back into the ocean, which means there is more erosion. If there is headland I predict that it will stop some of the erosion.

4 of 12

Materials

Gravel

Paint roller pan

Dry measuring cup

Sand / 50 lb

Water

Plastic 50 ml water bottle

Pencil

Timer

camera

5 of 12

Procedure

Put 5 cups of sand into the paint roller.
Spread most of the sand out in the shallow end.
Pour 6 cups of water into the deep end of the pan and wait 5 minutes.
Take a picture of the beach and record how it looks.
Take the water bottle with the lid on and lay it in the deep end horizontally.
Set a timer for one minute and bob your water bottle to make waves.
At the end of the one minute stop bobbing, and take a picture of the beach record observations.
Repeat steps 6 and 7 so there has been a total of 2 minutes of waves.
Take a picture and record observations.
Clean out the paint roller pan and then repeat steps 1 through 9 two more times.
Set the beach up like before and add two cups of gravel to make the headland.
Repeat steps 5 through 9 taking pictures and recording observations.
Repeat steps 11 and 12 two more times.

6 of 12

Data and Observations Trial 1

Typeof Beach	Wave TIme	Observations	Picture
Without Headland	0 minutes	The sand absorbed some of the water. Most of the sand stayed where it was originally put in the paint roller.
	1 minute	Where the waves are breaking on the sand the sand has moved from the shallow end to the deep end.
	2 minutes	More sand moved into the deep end so you could see the bottom of the pan.

7 of 12

Trial 2 and 3

Type of Beach	Wave time	Observations
Without Headland	0 minutes	The sand stayed in the same spot.
	1 minute	The sand has moved into the deep end of the roller but only barely.
	2 minutes	A lot of the sand moved into the deep end.

Type of beach	Wave time	Observations
Without headland	O minutes	The sand stayed where it was originally put.
	1 minute	Sand is moving from the shallow end into the deep end.
	2 minutes	More sand has moved into deep end,

8 of 12

Data and Observations Trial 1

Type of Beach	Wave Time	Observations	Picture
With Headland	0 minutes	The gravel pushed some of the sand to the side.
	1 minute	The gravel was blocking some of the sand from moving into the deep end.
	2 minutes	The gravel was still stopping some of the sand but on the sides where there was no gravel, the sand was moving into the deep end.

9 of 12

Trial 2

Type of Beach	Wave Time	Observations
With Headland	0 minutes	Everything stayed in the same place.
	1 minute	Some of the sand has moved to the deep end but only from the sides of the headland, not from behind it or infront of it.
	2 minutes	More sand has moved from the sides only to the deep end.

10 of 12

Trial 3

Type of Beach	Wave Time	Observations
With Headland	0 minutes	No sand has moved into the deep end.
	1 minute	Some of the sand only from the side came down into the deep end.
	2 minutes	Most of the sand only on the side came down to the deep end but not from the middle.

11 of 12

Conclusion

My hypothesis was correct because the longer the time the waves crashed onto the beach, the more the sand was getting pulled back into the deep end. This means there was more erosion. The headland stopped most of the erosion.

12 of 12

Real World Connection

My real world connection is that when ever I go to the beach after there has been big waves, I can see that chunks of sand from the beach where i am walking have gone, they have been eroded.

Another real life connection is people who have built their homes right on the coast line. Over the years the erosion has been so bad that it made people move incase there home gets washed away.