Ok, so you know how you can make those cute little ziplock baggy water cycles? Well, I thought I would take it up a notch and create mini-water cycles using the front part of the plastic packaging you find on glue stick packs and Expo packs. The picture above is misleading because it looks pretty nice, but I actually cropped out all of the shortcomings and "leakage."
So, here's the steps to what I attempted to do:
First, I outlined the plastic packaging on a piece of cardstock and then had the students take turns in small groups drawing the different sections of the water cycles.
Then, I laminated the card stock. I hole-punched a hole in the top of the plastic packaging. Then, I glued the plastic package under the edges with clear Elmer's glue (not the white kind because it will milky up the water later on).
Then I "sealed" the edges with 3M's weather sealant tape.
The students then filled the bottom "ocean" part with tinted blue water through the hole I had made in the plastic from the very beginning. We then plugged the hole with modeling clay and taped the water cycles to the window.
So far, we have had a 25% success rate of water cycles not leaking, and I still haven't seen any condensation at the tops of the packaging :(. Oh well, you live and you learn.
Of course I asked my students about what solutions they could think of to fix the leaks. We're supposed to be training our students to be good problem-solvers, right? That was my objective all along! :P
Do you have a suggestion to make this project work? I would love to hear it!
Here's one that is still retaining its water but you can still see on the cardstock where there are leaks.
Love the idea, but do you think perhaps they are not able to heat up enough? When you use a clear bag it is able to "catch" sunlight from both sides. In your case you have a piece of white paper that is going to reflect the heat, in effect not allowing your project to warm the water to evaporate. Just a thought :)
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