12th Annual Central Ohio Children’s Water Festival and the West Campus Science & Sustainability Festival

While the Ohio WRC may be primarily known as a research institute, we also collaborate with partners to reach the youth and general public on water resources issues. On Wednesday, May 15th, fifth-grade students from schools across Franklin County attended the 12th annual Central Ohio Children’s Water Festival at Franklin Park in Columbus, Ohio. The Festival promotes awareness of our valuable water resources through interactive displays, hands-on workshops, and fun presentations about drinking water, storm water and wastewater. The Ohio WRC led a hands-on activity about buoyancy, during which students explored the density of objects and liquids, and built paper boats they attempted to sink with metal washers.

A few days later on Saturday, May 18th, the Ohio WRC took part in WestFest: West Campus Science & Sustainability Festival. The event featured hands-on activities, tours of west campus research facilities, and lots of fun! The Ohio WRC hosted a Project WET activity called The Incredible Journey, which shows how dynamic the movement of water is. By role-playing a water molecule, participants learn to conceptualize the water cycle in a way that more closely approximates how water actually travels. In a game of chance and probability, participants collected beads as they traveled between lakes, clouds, soil, rivers, glaciers, plants, animals, and oceans!