How do rivers carve canyons over time?
River's Patient Chisel
How do rivers carve canyons over time?
Stand at the edge of a canyon and look down. That crack in the earth drops hundreds of meters—sometimes more than a kilometer—to a ribbon of water far below. How did a river do that? It seems impossible. Water is soft. Rock is hard. But give that soft water enough time, and it becomes the most patient sculptor on Earth.
The trick is this: rivers don't carve canyons by being strong. They carve canyons by never, ever stopping. A river flows over rock every single day—every hour, every minute—for thousands and thousands of years. Each day the rock wears down just a tiny bit. But those tiny bits add up.
