Distance Learning Module: Recycling Water in Space
This week’s Distance Learning theme is “life in space.”
All living organisms—from the tiniest bacteria to the biggest jungle predators, and all the plants on Earth—require water to survive. Of course, people need water, too—even when they are traveling or working in space. Water is dense—so even a little bit of it is heavy. This makes it very expensive to send water from Earth to space—more than $83,000 per gallon to be exact!
For this reason, astronauts—like the ones on the International Space Station (ISS)—need to find ways of reusing the water that they already have. The process of recycling wastewater is also known as water reclamation. Water reclamation is vital to space travel as we know it, and would be a “must” if we ever got to the point of sending people to live for long periods of time on extraterrestrial (outside of Earth) colony.
Bonus Module: Lenses
This week’s Distance Learning theme is optics, light, and the electromagnetic spectrum.
On Wednesday, we looked at how refraction impacts the way we see an object in water. This module builds on that activity, by using a bowl full of water and a few household props to further explore the properties of lenses.
Stick to just the hands-on activity for younger learners, or bring in the written blog content for middle/high school physics-lovers!