Did you know that we eat water? We do! Water is inside the crops that we grow for food. What happens if the water we use on our crops is polluted? In this activity you will see how easily pollution can get into our water, our food and us.
Vocabulary
- Pollution – the natural environment becoming contaminated (made dirty) by things humans make
Time
- Set up: 15 min
- Activity: 4 hours to overnight.
You will need
- A glass
- Tap water
- Red or blue food coloring.
- A knife (get your parents or teacher to help you use the knife)
- A stick of fresh celery with the leaves still on it
Here’s what you do
- Fill the glass with tap water.
- Add two or three drops of food coloring. Notice how it spreads through the water. Pollution spreads through water just like the food coloring does.
- Wash the piece of celery. Leave the leaves on.
- Being very careful, use the knife (or get your parents or teacher to do this) and cut off the bottom of the celery.
- Put the celery in the glass filled with colored water.
- Let the celery stalk sit there for at least three or four hours; you can even leave it overnight.
- When the time has passed, take the celery stalk out of the water.
- Use the knife (remember to get help from your parents or teacher) and cut a slice off the bottom of the stalk.
- Do this several times.
Questions to Answer
- How long did you leave the celery stalk in the water?
- Before you took the celery stalk out of the water, what did it look like?
- When you sliced off pieces from the celery stalk, what did you find?
- The food coloring is like pollution that gets into the water. If the food coloring moved all the way up into the celery stalk, what would happen if there was pollution in the water instead of food coloring?
- What does this tell you about polluted water?
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