Tag Archives: water

Water Nature Kit: At-Home Version

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World Water Day is on Monday March 22. According to the United Nations, World Water Day “celebrates water and raises awareness of the global water crisis,” and this year’s theme is valuing water. Let’s celebrate our favorite liquid with these fun activities! (To learn more about World Water Day, and join in on the virtual celebration, visit https://www.unwater.org/worldwaterday2021/.)

Every Saturday, Nature Kits are given out on a first-come, first-served basis from 10:00 am-12:00 pm. Nature Kits focus on a different theme each week and are meant to be done along our trails and given back once completed. If you can’t make it out to the Center to pick up a kit, make sure to check our blog each week for ways to get in some nature exploration at home.

 

Activity #1: Drops on a Penny

There are many properties of water that make it unique. One of these is its high surface tension. Surface tension describes the strong “layer” at the top of water. It’s what makes it possible for the water strider to “walk” across the surface of water. But don’t take my word for it. Test it yourself!

Materials: penny, eyedropper, water

  • Place a penny on a flat surface. (Choose wisely—the surface will get a little wet!)
  • Use an eyedropper to slowly drip drops of water onto the penny.
  • See how many drops you can add before the surface tension breaks. 

Activity #2: What floats your boat?

Buoyancy is the force that allows things to float on water. A paper boat, for example, floats on water because the force of the boat pushing down towards the water is less than the force of buoyancy pushing up from the water. Test it out by making your own origami boat using the graphic instructions below.

Materials: 8.5×11 paper, bowl or sink full of water, coins/stones optional

  • See if your boat can float in a tub of water or a sink.
  • Place small stones or coins into your boat to see how much weight it can hold until it is no longer buoyant and sinks.

 

Activity #3: Water on the Move!

Water is the liquid form of H2O. As a liquid, it has some unique properties that allow it to move about. One way water moves is through capillary action. Simply put, capillary action is the ability of a liquid to move without—or even against—gravity through a small space. Water will wick, or draw itself upwards, because it likes to stick to itself and often also to the surface around it. See for yourself!

Materials: cup, 10×2 inch strip paper towel, washable markers, water.

  • Get a cup and fill it with about 1 inch of water.
  • Cut a 10×2 inch strip of paper towel.
    • Use washable markers of varying colors to draw a line of circles across the 2 inch width about 5 inches up the strip.
    • Fill in the circle.
  • Drape the paper towel over the edge of the cup so that the bottom is just touching the water.
    • Fold the top over the edge to keep it from falling in.
  • Now wait and watch!
    • Can you see the water moving up the paper towel?
    • What happens when the water reaches the dots of marker ink? 

—Patti Dunne, Environmental Educator

Roxborough’s River and Water: A History

For almost 100 years the Roxborough Pumping Station, just above the Flat Rock Dam, was a landmark on the Schuylkill River, pumping water into two reservoirs on high ground to serve the city’s northwestern section. In this illustrated talk, Adam Levine, historian for Philadelphia Water, reveals why the system was built, how it worked, why it was abandoned, and its ultimate dereliction and demolition in 2011. River pollution and flooding, drownings, water filtration, the revitalization of the reservoirs as parkland, and the planned restoration of the canal locks at Flat Rock will also be discussed. Adam Levine has been researching the history of the city’s water system since 1998, and this brand-new talk is not to be missed. His website is phillyh2o.org.

This event is cosponsored by the Philadelphia Water Department, the Upper Roxborough Civic Association, the Roxborough Manayunk Conservancy, the Friends of the Upper Roxborough Reservoir Preserve, and Residents of the Shawmont Valley.

This event is part of #RiverDays a month-long recreational event series hosted by the Alliance for Watershed Education (AWE) of the Delaware River and supported by The William Penn Foundation.  AWE is comprised of 23 environmental education centers in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. Each of these centers is located along a Circuit Trail or major connecting trail, and on waterways throughout the Delaware River watershed.

The Art of Wood Bending

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By Carolyn Hesse

Carolyn Hesse is a resident artist part of our summer gallery, Wet Lab, a space for artists and Schuylkill Center visitors to explore and reflect on water in a dynamic environment.

 

For most artists, success is predicated on having enough time to work creatively.

This is true for me as well. Having time to make mistakes—and grow from them—is what drives every endeavor and can be what makes or breaks the spirit. So, to be given the gift of time at the Schuylkill Center was like a jewel that emits light at every angle; a non-objective based chunk of creative time immersed in a woodland setting. Wet Lab was consciously, and generously, set up as an open-ended concept. As result, it became a breath of fresh air in my artistic practice.

I used the time to make pieces for a current body of work that deals with wave and water imagery, titled: (i kept your sea ( i kept it safe)).  Springhouse Pond is down the hill behind the Discovery Center and I used it to soak strips of cedar of different lengths and widths for different amounts of time. I then brought the wood up to the gallery to bend and clamp them around forms where they would dry into the curves of those forms. Or break.

 

Either way, the experience was useful. These are some images of my process.

 

 

If you enjoy them, feel free to check on my website (carolynhessestudio.com) in the near future to see what they become after they’ve been cleaned up, sanded down, and incorporated into new sculptural pieces. My gratitude and appreciation for everyone I came into contact with at SCEE couldn’t be more heartfelt, thank you!

About the Author

Carolyn Hesse is one of our Wet Lab artists whose work is influenced by her time spent working for a wooden boat builder for 11 years. Her work is influenced by traditional wooden boat building techniques and she likes to engage in the idea of suspension, in the literal spatial, chemical sense, and the ephemeral sense related to time. Her pieces explore these concepts through visual repetition as well as reference to the straight line and the horizon. More recently she has been creating pieces that are less formal and more narrative.

 

Wet Lab is the current project in the Schuylkill Center’s gallery, on view until August 18, and is a space for artists and Schuylkill Center visitors to explore and reflect on water in a dynamic environment.  Over the course of the summer, twenty artists are responding to water in a variety of media, and presenting their work and process in our gallery for two to three week periods. Artists display completed works along with works in progress, at times using the gallery as their studio to work through a new idea or test creative hypotheses. Artist Carolyn Hesse participated in Wet Lab for three weeks in June and July, and reflects on her experience in this post.

Getting Millennials to Care More about the Environment

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By Whitney Works, Intern for SCEE’s Environmental Art Department

Working with the Environmental Art Department of the Schuylkill Center has piqued my interest in a few things. While I recognize my own conservation habits, I can’t help but wonder about my colleagues and other Millennials (those aged 18-29). Those outside of the environmental science or nonprofit sphere; how do they view the environment and its pressing issues?

Surprisingly, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology published a study earlier this year finding that Millennials were more civically and politically disengaged and less concerned about helping the larger community than GenX and Baby Boomers were at the same ages.

So, what?

Millennials are now the largest group of Americans outnumbering Baby Boomers (nearly 90 million strong) by an estimated 20 million. Their presence can no longer be overlooked. It’s estimated that they will have the most buying power by 2017 and for the next 40 years after that.

Not only do nonprofits have to make their missions and projects more engaging to Millennials, but they also need to get them excited about social change.

That’s just it. How exactly do you encourage Millennials to care more about the environment? Beyond growing their own gardens, composting, recycling, and using sustainable materials.

Participant Media just launched a new channel YouTube channel, TakePart TV. The channel “serves as a digital home for clever, eye-opening and optimistic content around big issues that face our planet for Millennials ranging from teens to thirtysomethings”. Clips like the Waterpocalypse Now video, from the Brain Food Daily series takes a humorous, more crass approach, but one has to wonder if these types of media really move audiences to action.

Ecoarttech, a unique organization “combining primitive with emergent technologies, to investigate the overlapping terrain between ‘nature’, built environments, mobility, and electronic spaces” may be on to something. Their current project Indeterminate Hikes+ is a mobile media app that “transforms everyday landscapes into sites of bio-cultural diversity and wild happenings”. Users map out a hike in a natural or urban setting and along the way are asked to perform small tasks, learning to appreciate the surrounding environment and notice the unique sits often overlooked.

Having the unique advantage of combining both visual art with environmental education, what can the Schuylkill Center take away from these two examples in order to engage Philadelphia young professionals about relevant environmental issues, such as stormwater run-off?

I’m on a self-made mission to find out.

Stay tuned for more blog posts from the Advisory Board, and more on the Millennial view on Environmental Art.