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Hot Spot Hawaii Activity
Directions: Hawaii has 8 main islands, and 132 different
land points stretching 1,523 miles across the Pacific ocean.
You are going to simulate how 5 of these islands were
created by a hotspot.
I. Hot Spot Volcanoes
1) On a small piece of paper, draw a circle (about 3 inches wide), color it in withred marker, and
tape itto your table. This represents a hot spot in the earth’smantle where magma rises close
to the surface.
2) Now take a large piece of paper and place the far leftcorner over the hot spot.
3) Draw an island on the paper over the hotspot (you should be able to see thehotspot through
the paper). You just made the first of the Hawaiian Islands.
4) Now move the paper to the North West about 1 inch. Draw another island.
5) Repeat until you have 5 islands.
6) Label your islands Kauai, Oahu, Molokai, Maui, and Hawaii in the correctorder.
7) Copy the table below onto a separate sheet of paper and calculate how much each island
moves per year (Rate = Distance/Time).*You MUST show your work!
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Age of each Island:
- Kauai = 5.1 MY
- Oahu = 3.7 MY
- Molokai = 1.9 MY
- Maui = 1.3 MY
- Hawaii = 0.4 MY
Island / To Island / Distance / Moved Inches Per Year
Kauai / Oahu / 63 miles
Oahu / Molokai / 22 miles
Molokai / Maui / 8 miles
Maui / Hawaii / 26 miles
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After Questions: *Answer on the back of your Hawaii Map
1) What does the large paper that you moved across the hotspot represent?
2) Draw an arrow on your map to show which direction the Pacific plate is moving.
3) Which island moved the most per year?
4) Why is Hawaii the largest island?
5) Will there be more Hawaiian islands in the future? Explain why or why not.
**Honors ONLY!
II. Using Silverswords to Indicate Island Age
Introduction:
A group of plants called the silverswords exist throughout the Hawaiian Islands. The common ancestor of the silverswords is from California and colonized the oldest island about 5.2 million years ago. Once established, it diversified into many different species. These species then slowly dispersed (spread their seeds across the ocean) to inhabit neighboring islands. The further away an island was, the longer it took for the seeds to disperse. It is possible to find out the relative age of the islands by looking at how these plants moved throughout time.
Draw the number of species of silversword on
the map that you made:
Kauai: 12
Oahu: 10
Molokai: 7
Maui: 5
Hawaii: 2
After Questions: *Answer on the back of your Hawaii Map
6) What is the general pattern between the number of species that an island has, and its location?
7) Draw an arrow in the direction which you think the silverswords dispersed.
8) Why are there the fewest species of silversword on Hawaii (main island)?