River Formations In a Box

In a group, we did a lab that observed different river formations. We decided to get creative and find a way to make an earthquake and see how that would affect the rivers. First, we pictured how the scene would go and made a hypothesis of how it would turn out. We guessed that rivers would form and stream down across the box and change directions through the process till the "earthquake" stopped. To do this experiment, we had a plastic, open, rectangular box with about a 3/4 of an inch of diatomaceous earth covering the bottom. Next, we got a small magnet and placed it in the diatomaceous earth and put a small mound of more earth on top of that. We turned a magnetic stirrer on underneath the box in the area that the magnet was buried and turned it on. The magnet stirred and made the earth shake. When we poured water on top of that, the earth sunk in and made a deep in ground pool. So when we turned the stirrer off, everything came to a standstill and the result was a deep lake that sunk in. So, in conclusion our data showed that our hypothesis was false and the earthquake did not make numerous rivers but one lake.