How Lucky We Are!

Developed by Nancy Bray for Upstream-Downstream CampActivity at A Time for Science Nature and ScienceLearningCenter

Objectives:

Discovering Water Availability for World Populations

Calculating personal usage of water resources using on-line calculator

Comparing personal usage to usage in developing countries

Experiencing the difficulties of getting water from a groundwater well with a hand pump

Discovering how heavy water is when carrying it a short distance

Making a personal choice to conserve water

Materials:

Computer and projection system

5-gallon buckets (Any bucket will do. Just make necessary adjustments in activity.)

Groundwater hand-pump (If not available, use pond, ditch, or spigot. This is very adaptable.)

Copies of the 40 Gallon Challenge from University of Georgia

Copies of water issues found on

Procedure:

  1. Ask campers what they use water for during a typical day.
  2. List on board as they respond.
  3. Prioritize the list from most important to least important.
  4. Go to and project for whole group.
  5. Use list generated by group to calculate the amount of water used. If individual computers are available, have each person calculate and then discuss the differences. What use seemed to represent the widest difference?
  6. Discuss how difficult it is in developing nations to get water. The April, 2010, National Geographic has some great articles and pictures about this.
  7. Have the group calculate how many 5-gallon buckets they would need in order to collect the amount of water they calculated.
  8. Carry buckets (one per group) to the pump or chosen water source. Make it a pretty good distance.
  9. Take turns pumping water until buckets are full. Kids love to use the hand pump but discover that this is hard work.
  10. Connect the energy that they are using to the amount of energy provided by the food they eat. (When they work hard, they get thirsty which leads to more water usage!)
  11. Have them take turns carrying the water back to the classroom. When water starts splashing out, have them brainstorm ways that can be avoided. (Filling the buckets with less water means more trips! How can this problem be solved?)
  12. Once back in the classroom, ask how they might reduce the amount of water they use if they weren’t so lucky as to have clean, potable water coming from every faucet in their homes.
  13. Give them a copy of the 40 Gallon Challenge to take home and go over with their families. If they are willing to take the pledge on the challenge, tally up the number of gallons saved by your group and send it to the University of Georgia.