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Saturday, June 30, 2012

SUMMER ACTIVITIES: SWIMMING and BUILDING YOUR OWN SOLAR DESALINATOR

SUMMER ACTIVITIES: SWIMMING and BUILDING YOUR OWN SOLAR DESALINATOR

by Georgevine Moss

SWIMMING

You'll REALLY need:

1. Sea or a pool or a lake...or a river, all preferably clean

You'll need:

1. A swimsuit, unless it's one of those places...
2. Sunscreen, cause you know....
3. A towel, cause it's pretty useful overall

Optional:

1. A bottle of water

If you don't have one with you and you are dying of thirst so to speak, and for some inexplicable reason there's no potable water to be found anywhere, you could always try making your own solar desalinator...if:

1. you have sea water
2. sun
3. a few other items (e.g. a plastic bottle, a plastic cup, something to cut them with)
4. lots of patience

Note: Instructions and a picture can be found at the end of this post.

If you are planning to spend a lot of time at the beach or wherever and/or you have children you may also want to have a ball...to play with AND have fun.

A ball is a pretty good choice because:

a. you can use it to play a variety of games, like football (a.k.a. soccer), volleyball, water polo
b. can be used in the water and on land
c. one ball can entertain a whole lot of people
d. is a lot less likely to annoy the other people around you, if there are any

Unless of course you are a tennis fan, one that will not play any other sport unless it resembles your favorite one. You know what I'm talking about. In that case, a ball would be of absolute no use to you.

HOW TO BUILD A REALLY SIMPLE, POSSIBLY FUNCTIONAL SOLAR DESALINATOR WITH AS FEW MATERIALS AS POSSIBLE

INSTRUCTIONS

-Take a 0.5 L empty water bottle (clean) and cut the top (bottle neck)

-Take a plastic cup and cut it pretty low

-Then put the small cup you just made and insert it into the bottle you cut earlier.

-Pour a little bit of sea water into the cup, making sure you don't spill any inside the bottle. (That's actually not that hard to do since if you are using a 0.5 L bottle then the cup is going to take pretty much all the space leaving only a little bit of room all around.)

-Next, take the bottle neck you've cut from the bottle, turn it upside down (mouth looking down) and place it on top of the bottle. If you have a little bit of tape, or anything like it, so that you can connect the two pieces and seal any gap all the better.

-Finally, take the bottle (always being careful not to spill any sea water inside the bottle) and place it under the sun.

Note: In my little experiment I let the bottle out for two days and I got a nice little bit of water at the bottom of the bottle, plus lots of drops all around it.

Here's a picture:

More experiments to follow. If you have any engineering challenges for me I'd love to try them so leave them in the comments, though results are certainly NOT guaranteed.