Powerhouse: Water Desalinization

This week in science we have returned to studying the Powerhouse!  We worked with this kit last summer but never finished, so now that the temperatures are up in the 100's again we thought it was the perfect time to try it out again.  The Powerhouse is all about how to use the environment to your advantage to save on energy in various ways.

In this lesson we learned all about water desalinization: the process for removing salt from water to create clean drinking water.  First we created a small thumbtack scale from tea light cans so that we could measure our salt in grams.

Next we measured the salt out (10 grams=40 thumbtacks), added it to our water and mixed it up to create our salt water.

Then we took everything outside and poured the salt water into the greenhouse area of our Powerhouse and closed it all up.  We inserted a thermometer so that we could keep track of the temperature in the greenhouse.  We started out at 30 degrees C (86F).

Two hours later we had a small amount of fresh water and some dry salt.  The temperature in the greenhouse went up to 122F during our desalinization process.  Next we learn more about cooking without a kitchen.