Rebecca Siegel - Rivers and Streams!: With 25 Science Projects for Kids

Titles in the Explore Waterways Set

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Many plants and animals make their homes in rivers and streams. Here is a glimpse of just a fewyoull meet many more in the pages of this book!

There are more than 165 major rivers on our planet, plus thousands of smaller rivers and streams ! The chances are good that youve been near or on a river sometime in your life!

What did you notice about the river? How would you describe it? When you are near a river, what does it smell like? What does it look like? What are some of the characteristics of rivers and streams?

Rivers form naturally and contain fresh water. They are longer than they are wide and flow toward a larger body of water. A stream is any narrow flow of water that has a current that runs in one direction. In fact, a stream is simply a smaller river. Lets take a look at the different parts of a river.

WORDS TO KNOW

river: a large quantity of water that flows through a channel from its source to its mouth.

stream: a narrow flow of water that has a current that runs in one direction. A river is a type of stream.

current: the movement of the water in a body of water. In rivers and streams, the current moves in one direction: downhill toward the ocean.

THE PARTS OF A RIVER

Its easy to think of a river as just one thing, the way you might think of a human being as one thing or a building as one thing. But if you look more closely, youll find that a river, like a human or a building, is made of many different parts.

One way to look at the parts of a human is from top to bottom. A human has a head, a neck, a torso, arms, hands, legs, and feet. If you look more closely at the head, youll see that it has hair, eyebrows, eyes, ears, a nose, a mouth, and a chin.

Look closely at an eye and youll see that it has a cornea, pupil, iris, lid, and eyelashes. If you had a microscope, you could see even smaller parts!

The same is true of a river or stream. Bodies of water have lots of different parts.

DID YOU KNOW?

The Mississippi River is about 2,300 miles long. Its narrowest point, just 20 to 30 feet wide, is at Lake Itasca in Minnesota. Its widest point, at 11 miles wide, is Lake Winnibigoshish, also in Minnesota.

WORDS TO KNOW

source: where a river or stream starts.

headwaters: the source of a river or stream.

spring: a place where water from underground flows up to the earths surface.

mouth: the end of a river. The mouth is where the river joins a larger body of water, such as a lake or ocean.

channel: a river or streams path.

bed: the ground that a river flows over, including the land at the bottom of the river and the sides up to the rivers waterline.

bank: the land on the edge of a body of water. Riverbanks are the land on either side of the rivers channel.

The source of a river, also called its headwaters , is where the river starts. If you think of a river as a long, straight racetrack, the source is where the rivers race begins. A rivers source might be a spring or melting snow in the mountains.

The end of a river is where it crosses its finish line. Called the rivers mouth , it is the place where it empties into a larger body of water, such as a lake, the ocean, or even another river. The channel is the river or streams path, from its source to its mouth. Part of a river channel is the water itself.

The channel has two other important partsthe bed and the bank .

WORDS TO KNOW

waterline: the line where a river or streams water meets the riverbank.

turbulent: being in a state of agitation, or unpredictable motion.

meander: a winding path taken by a stream or river.

sediment: particles of natural material, such as sand or silt, that are carried from one place to another.

deposit: to drop or leave something.

A rivers bed is all of the land that cradles the river, from the very bottom of the deepest part of the river all the way up to the rivers waterline . The banks are the land on each side of the river that is above the waterline.

A rivers path usually changes in several ways as it winds from source to mouth. At its source, the water is often flowing quickly and is turbulent . The rivers channel is usually narrow, and its path is pretty straight.

Toward the middle of a river, it becomes wider and deeper. The water moves more slowly. Its path may wander, following a winding, S-curve path called a meander . Finally, as the river reaches its mouth, it is at its slowest and widest.

Sometimes a river is moving much more quickly than the body of water it empties into. The place where the river meets the other body of water acts as a brake on the river. If the river has been carrying a lot of sediment , this sudden change in speed can make the river deposit its load of sediment.

WORDS TO KNOW

delta: land that forms from the buildup of sediment carried by a river to its mouth.

property: a characteristic, quality, or distinctive feature of something.

waterway: a channel or body of water.

creek: a small stream, also called a brook. The word you use for this depends on where you live. For example, some people call a small stream a creek, a kill, or a run.

tributary: a river or stream that flows into a larger river or lake.

branch: a stream that flows away from the main stem of a river.

As time passes, this deposited sediment builds up. It forms new land in the mouth of the river, called a delta .

RIVER COMPARISONS

Now that we know some of the properties of a river, lets take a look at how rivers are different from other waterways .

A creek or a brook is a stream. Different regions have different names for streams, including crick, falls, burn, and many more! A tributary or branch is a part of a river that stems off from the main river. These are usually smaller than rivers but larger than creeks or brooks.