A Water Quantity Experiment
River otter
Did you know that all the water we have in the world right now is all the water we’ll ever have?
It’s true! The same water that travels through rivers and streams is the same water that we drink and other animals drink. It evaporates – that is, it is taken up into the air – and comes down again as rain and snow, which flows into rivers and streams, over and over and over and over again. So we need to use our water wisely.
And did you know that conserving water – that is, using less of it – is a good idea for many reasons:
- Conserving water helps save fish! The less water we use, the more that is left in rivers and streams and lakes. Water for fish is like air for us – they need it to live. More water means that fish can swim deeper, and farther, and can breathe easier!
- Conserving water helps to fight pollution! How? The less water there is in a river or stream, the more concentrated the pollution becomes. And, when rivers have less water they move more slowly, making it harder for the river to clean itself.
To better understand what ‘concentrated’ means, try this experiment:
You will need:
- Two large clear jars or glasses of the same size
- Water
- Food coloring
- A spoon
- Take the two jars or glasses. Fill one almost all the way up with water. Fill the second one less than halfway up with water. Imagine that these two containers are like two rivers. One has a lot of water, and the other one has not very much.
- Imagine that the food coloring is pollution. It could be oil from a car or boat engine, or trash, or chemicals that seep into rivers and lakes from people’s lawns and from farms. Put two drops of food coloring in each container, and stir with the spoon.
- What difference do you see between the color of the water in the two containers? Do you see how the color is darker in the jar with less water? This shows that pollution is concentrated when there is less water.
When pollution is concentrated it causes more harm to fish and other creatures who live in the water.
