Water Filter Experiment

Posted by Rosie

The boys had an extra day off school today as the teachers were on strike. In fact it was a National Strike in protest of Sarkozy's handling of the economy although speaking with our neighbouring farmer, he thought many strikers just used it to have a day off work. But what-ever the case I still needed something to entertain the boys for a while so I could then spend the rest of the day getting on in the garden and Simon could get on fencing and soil moving. Neither boy has a very long attention span if I want them to help me garden and Simon, power tools and small boys is not a good combination!

Tom had had an acid rain science kit for his birthday so following on from that I helped them to set up set up a water filter experiment. The idea was to show how filtering dirty water could clean it up considerably - and the results were quite impressive.

First take a pot of water and make as dirty as you can - the boys added mud, sand, leaves, rubbish and grass. Mix well. Then make a water filter. We used a flower pot lined with newspaper and topped with layers of fine sand, coarse sand and pebbles. Pour the water through and see how clean it gets. The first filtration was a bit disappointing but by the third it was noticeably cleaner.

The boys were happy, their experiment had worked and they then left me alone to garden whilst Simon was able to finish the fencing and gate into Pignatius's pen without tripping over two boys who want to "help".