STEM at Home: Water Filtration
Our EverWild students have been learning all about the importance of our resources - especially our water! Being next to the Boise River affords our students the opportunity to connect with our local waterways. One STEM experiment you can try out at home with your kids is making a water filtration system!
Materials: plastic bottles, cotton, sand, charcoal, gravel, small rocks, leaves, dirty water
Directions:
Collect all of the necessary materials, trying to get as many from your local area as you can!
Cut an empty plastic bottle in half, placing the bottom on a flat surface and the top part of the bottom upside down inside of it.
Provide the materials to your child and see how they choose to put the layers together inside the bottle.
Once it’s full, have your child pour dirty water into the top and watch as it trickles down!
Allow your child to experiment to see how it results in different levels of clarity for the end result water (e.g., try using only sand, use only natural materials, only fill the bottle up halfway, repeat the process multiple times and compare water cleanliness).
For those wanting a more traditional route, the preferred method is: first layer cotton, second layer sand, third layer charcoal, fourth layer gravel, & fifth layer small rocks.
*IMPORTANT NOTE: Filtered water is still not guaranteed to be completely clean so don’t allow your children to drink the water this produces — always boil water fully to ensure it’s safe!
Want more information and resources on water filtration? Check out the links below:
