Tree Week Activity #2
Water Filteration Station!
Let’s play a game with our imaginations...
…so, when you woke up this morning you found yourself alone in a forest, nothing with you except the clothes on your back and an empty water bottle. You need to go search first and foremost for the most important thing you need to survive- that’s right clean drinking water!
Now back to reality, we were interested to see if we could take dirty water from a puddle and filter it naturally to make cleaner and possibly drinkable*.
*Note: We never advise drinking water that you don’t know is safe to drink. We conducted this experiment for the sole purpose of filtering out dirt from water to make it clearer.
Here’s what you need to get started:
-an empty plastic water bottle or 2L soda bottle
-scissors
-2 jars (1 full of dirty water)
-a collection of: gravel, charcoal, leaves, grass, small sticks, pinecones, and moss
**you don’t need all of these items- just enough to make thick layers in your bottle
-coffee filters (optional)
Okay now we are going to start assembling our filter. Keep in mind that this is an experiment and you should never attempt drinking water if you don’t know that it is safe to drink.
First, take your bottle and with your scissors (adult supervision required) and cut the bottom off just a little way up the bottle to leave the majority of the bottle intact.
Next if using coffee filters, put one on the top of the bottle and then screw the lid on. You can use your scissors or a sharp object (adult supervision required) to poke a few holes in the lid.
Holding the bottle upside down, now take your collection of nature items and start by making a layer of charcoal or gravel. Then grass and moss can go next. Leaves, sticks, and woodchips can then be added. Finally, add pine cones on the top and make sure to press down firmly to compact all materials inside the bottle. We added an additional coffee filter on top because our water was very dirty and chunky, but the pine cones are amazing at filtering these out too!
Now you can put your completed filter over an empty jar and slowly start pouring the dirty water into the filter. It may take several filterings in order to show a difference. We noticed the time we filtered our water it took most of the big chunks and rocks out, and then the additional times the water started to become more clear. Give it a try and see how clean you can get your water!
