Salt Water Evaporation

Tony: Yesterday I made an experiment to understand salt water evaporation.


We put some salt into some water. We also put a jar in the center. We covered the bowl in plastic wrap. And put a penny on the top. It's sitting on the dishwasher in the sun and we will check it every day for a week before trying to drink the water out of the jar.

Mom: This experiment is out of the same book as the Sun Tea: "A Child's Introduction to the Environment". Basically you start out with salt water and look at how you can get the salt out of it.

Here is how it looks so far: (I think the saran wrap might be a bit tight because the water droplets aren't moving yet, but we are going to watch and see what happens and try it again if we don't get water in the jar by the end of the 7 days.)

Sun Tea

We are using some fun books from the library! We found one book on the environment and renewable resources so we tried two fun projects today! Tony is making sun tea for our family and we are doing an experiment on making fresh water from drinking water. Here are the preliminary pictures. We will keep you updated!







Tony:
This is how I made Sun Tea following the instructions from "A Child's Introduction to The Environment..." by Michael Driscoll and Professor Dennis Driscoll.

You'll need:
1 gallon (4 liters) water
6 tea bags (ordinary tea, or try an herbal kind such as peppermint or a fruit flavor)
a clear 1-gallon jug or pitcher

1. Pour the water into the clear jug. Add the tea bags. Cover with a lid or plastic wrap.

2. Leave the jug outside in the bright sun for until the water is amber colored (usually just two or three hours). Remove tea bags.

3. Refrigerate the jug and drink the tea within the next day or two. And thats it.

I changed the recipe slightly because i did not have a 1 gallon jug or pitcher.

Instead i used 2 liters. 3 bags of tea. And then i did the rest of the instuctions.