⛰️ Can pieces of hills go traveling?

Look out the window. Can you see a hill? That hill is made of rock and dirt. And guess what? Little pieces of it go traveling!

It's called erosion. Erosion means rain and wind carry tiny bits of a hill away. When rain falls on a hill, the water runs down. It pushes tiny bits of dirt along, like crumbs in a bathtub. Those bits slide into a stream, then into a big river, and the river carries them far, far away.

Wind helps move tiny bits too. So a speck of hill might take a longer trip than your whole family! Some bits travel thousands of kilometres! Wave bye-bye to the hill!

On this drive, we pass hills and water. Those hills are made of rock and dirt. And little pieces of them go traveling! Can a piece of a hill really take a trip? Let's follow one tiny bit of rock, smaller than a grain of rice. It lives high on a hillside, snug with all its rock friends. Then one day, a big rainstorm comes.

Rain pours down, and water starts running downhill like kids on a slide. The water grabs our tiny rock and carries it along! Running water is strong. It pushes and rolls little pieces, the way bathwater swirls your toy boats around. The steeper the hill, the faster the water runs, so the more pieces it can carry. That moving of rock and dirt has a name: erosion. Our tiny rock tumbles into a stream, then into a big river.

It never even packed a suitcase! Wind can carry tiny pieces too, blowing dust across the sky. Some pieces travel farther than a car could drive in many, many days. Can you spot a steep hill out the window? At last the water slows down, and our tiny rock settles on the bottom, far from home. The hills around us are still sending little pieces on journeys, one rainstorm at a time.