As we continue to learn about our environment, we have discovered that pollutants do find their way into our food chain. Many people believe that a small amount of pollutants do not have a negative impact in a large area because it becomes so diluted. To show how a small amount can truly impact areas we think are safe from harm we conducted an experiment. We took six clear plastic cups. Every other one had water and food coloring in them. Those in between had no water. Students hypothesized that the "safe space" between colors wouldn't interact. But with the catalysts of wind, rain, or others, this would change. To represent this we folded a single white paper towel connecting two neighboring cups. We waited, predicted, and observed. We saw that the colored water was pulled into the empty cups pretty closely leveling out the amount of water in each of the six cups. The colors mixed turning them into a rainbow. In a separate experiment we took four cups with only the end cup having colored water to see if the intensity of the color would decrease with distance travelled down the line of cups. The simple demonstration caused us to think about how interconnected all things are in our environment and hopefully will cause us to make safe choices now and in the future.
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February 2016
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