Water Unit Study (II), Water Activities, Water Treatment Field Trip

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I was excited about doing a Water Unit again because this was one of the most fun units we did when we were just starting out homeschooling! We end up talking about the Water Cycle a lot because we've done a lot of geology, but we hadn't gone much into the properties of water, its chemical composition, etc. for a long time!

A lot of the activities from our first time through this unit actually recycled rather well. Many times when I repeat a unit, I find myself re-doing most of it because my students are different! Having girls as my "older grades" and boys as my "younger grades" just changes things a little. And that was true this time too, but I felt like I was able to use a lot of activities again.

One change was that I bought a water blob this time instead of making one! (It's called "the Blobzter." I'm sorry about that.) Good call, if I do say so myself. It was sturdier and worked better for making waves (though it was still hard to find a place in the yard where it would be level enough! We thought our grass was fairly level, but the water proved very effectively that it isn't entirely! We finally put blankets under the blob and set it up on the basketball court!). It was pretty fun to make the blob ourselves last time—satisfying, you know. But I was happy not to have to this time.

The kids had such a great time playing on this, for days and days. The little ones just bounced happily around, but the big ones made up all kinds of fun games to play! We had a hot September so it was perfect.

You can look up activities from the previous time we did this unit (2012) for more detail, but here are some of the things we did this time:

We did a water taste test with different kinds of bottled water (and boiled water, tap water, etc). Always an interesting thing to do. I can never tell much difference at all! And I'm suspicious of anyone who says he can. Ha! But, it is easy to distinguish the sort of blank, flat taste of distilled or fully purified water from the nice, slightly mineral-y taste of our tap water. I like our tap water better! But I know there are some places we've visited where the tap water didn't taste good at all. So there ARE differences.

I looked around online for some sort of field trip, and finally found this one of the Water Reclamation Facility:  https://svsewer.com/treatment/jordan-basin-water-reclamation-facility/tours/

I didn't know exactly what "water reclamation" was, but it turned out to be sewage treatment! This water pictured above smelled SO BAD. Just an awful smell…but not exactly like cows or toilets. Just kind of, I don't know, earthy? grassy? But bad, definitely bad. But it was only when you were right next to it. The rest of the place was fine. And it was super interesting to see how they take the water through multiple steps to "reclaim" it. These tanks with all the bubbles are full of bacteria (and other organisms, maybe?) which biologically purify the water as they "eat" it. It was also funny to hear that when they built this facility, they had to order bacteria from another facility and get it delivered!

We liked this big pipe room

There are a whole bunch of other steps the water goes through (including ultraviolet irradiation) but eventually it's clean enough to go back into the Jordan River! We don't bring it back through the system as drinking water at that point (it's secondary water), but our tour guide said in some cities they are doing that too—"toilet to tap," I believe she called it, haha. She said it's actually not that hard to get it clean enough, but it makes some people nervous, understandably.

Anyway, it was a great field trip. Fascinating, and introduced us to tons of stuff we just had no idea of before—which is my favorite type of thing to learn. Things I didn't even know enough to know I didn't know!

One day we borrowed my mom's big bubble wands and made some special "big bubble" solution. Unfortunately, it didn't work very well—I don't know what was wrong. Was the day too dry? Too windy? Did I mix the solution wrong? I'm not sure. I have done big bubbles before with great success, where you can put a bubble around your whole body, etc. But this time all we got was a bunch of "almost-bubbles." Still, it was a pretty fun way to spend a nice Fall morning!

Another day. Talking about surface tension and surfactants. We did that milk/food coloring surface tension activity too. And "how many drops of water can you fit on a penny."

Gus was delighted with these bubbles!

This is the "underwater volcano" demonstration. The small red bottle is full of hot water, surrounded by the cold water of the big blue jar.

It's fun to watch the hot water rise and spread out like steam or hot air from the volcano!

And this is a demonstration about liquid density, with layers of oil, water, honey, and corn syrup.