Last Tuesday we kicked off our community science project on rising temperatures in New Hampshire with a conversation about climate change impacts that we’ve experienced in our work, gardens, homes, etc. We’re working with the League of Conservation Voters, the Harris Center for Conservation Education, and other groups to get people thinking about what hotter summers mean for us all. Now we want your help in June and July keeping an eye on the thermometer and how we’re keeping cool!

For New Hampshire’s April school vacation week, when none of us is actually going anywhere, we decided to focus on things we could do if we did have some sort of wild vacation adventure and ended up on a deserted island.

On Tuesday, we learned how to use the sun’s energy to cook our lunch. Today, we’ll see how we can use to sun to make water drinkable. Note that since we aren’t actually on a deserted island surrounded be sea water, we need to make our own for this activity. Use of a stove is needed to boil water—please use adult supervision for this!

Learn how different colors interact with heat in this simple solar-powered activity!

This activity is geared toward elementary-level learners, but can easily scale up or down depending on existing science knowledge. Younger children may appreciate performing the experiment with less emphasis on the background and concluding information, while older students may choose to supplement this lesson with in-depth research on wavelengths and energy.