A project of the Water Education Foundation. Funded by
grants from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (Mid-Pacific Region),
U.S. Geological Survey (California Water Science Center) and
California Department of Water Resources.
Sign up here to get the quarterly Gazette
newsletter sent to your inbox.
You might feel like our natural world is out of balance right now and with good reason: The first tornado of 2025 touched down not in the Midwest’s ‘Tornado Alley’, but in Northern California’s Tehama County, followed within days by fires that exploded across Southern California. All within the first week of January.
Both events were driven by weather extremes that are becoming more common throughout California and the world. Extreme wind patterns played a role in both. The fires were driven by record Santa Ana winds and extreme soil moisture levels of just 2 percent to 5 percent of average across much of Southern California – conditions that can draw so much moisture from living plants that fires become almost unstoppable.
Dispelling misconceptions is often hard to accomplish and discovering you unwittingly helped spread an erroneous perception is downright gut-wrenching. Case in point: Using a basketball to help people visualize one cubic foot in estimating the flow of water in a stream.
Jay Lund, a retired UC Davis professor of civil and environmental engineering, attempted to deflate the basketball imagery in a March 2023 California WaterBlog post demonstrating the analogy is not mathematically correct.
Cubic foot per second – or CFS – is a hydrological term for a volume of water equal to 7.48 gallons flowing past a given point each second. CFS is commonly used to gage streamflow in the United States. But visualizing a one cubic foot box is not so easy for most people. Basketballs on the other hand are familiar, and someone in the past got the idea of having people think of cubic feet and basketballs.
Suddenly, from behind the rim of the moon, in long, slow-motion moments of immense majesty, there emerges a sparkling blue and white jewel, a light, delicate sky-blue sphere laced with slowly swirling veils of white, rising gradually like a small pearl in a thick sea of black mystery. It takes more than a moment to fully realize this is Earth … home.
~Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut
Gazing up from Earth, the moon dominates our view of outer space at night, casting shadows that have fired human imagination, fear and wonder from time immemorial. But this spectacle pales to Mitchell’s miles-high view of Earth as a “sparkling blue and white jewel.”
What makes Earth stand out in space as a brilliant blue oasis of life is its abundance of water. As the science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke once noted, “How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean.”
Engaging Students with the Blue Planet Activity
Helping students visually and mathematically understand how much of the Earth’s surface is covered by water is the premise of Project WET’s recently updated “Blue Planet” activity (Foundations of Water Education, p. 23).
Athletes from around the world will be convening in Paris, France this summer to compete at the Olympic games under the motto, “Citius, Altius, Fortius,” which translates to “Faster, Higher, Stronger.” This is also an apt motto for studying the amazing properties of water in the Project WET activity, “H2Olympics.
“H2Olympics” is an activity that has been used at summer camps and summer school programs around the country for decades, as well as in classrooms during the school year. The activity engages students in five events where they can observe the water properties of adhesion, the ability of water molecules to stick to other substances and cohesion, the ability of water molecules to stick to each other. You can find details about the activity in the Project WET Guide 2.0, page 13, or the Foundations of Water Education guide, page 13.
Water is such a simple molecule. Just two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen make up the dihydrogen monoxide molecule or H2O. The two hydrogen atoms attach to the oxygen in a manner that resembles the head of the Disney character Mickey Mouse, giving the molecule a slightly positive charge around the hydrogen mouse ears and a slightly negative charge near the mouse chin on the other side. Together, they form a molecular property known as polarity.
“With a ranger’s hat and shovel and a pair of dungarees, you will find him in the forest always sniffin’ at the breeze,” as the old U.S. Forest Service jingle goes, Smokey Bear is second only to Santa Claus as the most recognized popular culture figure in the United States.
“The teacher must derive not only the capacity, but the desire, to observe natural phenomena. The teacher must understand and feel her position of observer: The activity must lie in the phenomenon.” — MariaMontessori
The future’s in the air,
I can feel it everywhere
Blowing with the wind of change. ~Scorpions, “Wind of Change”
This song began playing in my mind near the end of the Project WET Coordinators conference in August, after learning more about the multiple changes coming to our organization. No, the changes are not comparable to the fall of the Soviet Union. But the song by the German rock band Scorpions captures the mood of many of us as we left the annual gathering: anxious and unsure, but optimistic about the new possibilities the changes will provide for educators across the country.
Here are some of the key changes:
Updated activities and four new guides! Why? Because the recent exorbitant rise in printing and shipping costs has made it too expensive to reprint and distribute the 3.3-pound Project WET Guide 2.0. Instead, we are publishing four smaller guides and updating the guides’ activities for the first time in 12 years, before current education standards were adopted.
The new and revised activities will stay true to the same constructivist design integrated into current science standards. It will be great to finally have our Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards work integrated directly into activities.
“Foundations in Water Education”: This guide will offer a dozen of the most popular and adaptable Project WET activities and is slated to be available by the end of this fall or early next year. This is expected to be a great introductory guide for many, including educators new to Project WET; budding educators and interpreters in college programs; and outreach or outdoor educators looking for a smaller guide loaded with engaging activities to teach multiple water topics.
“Weather whiplash.” This term has become a favorite in weather-related articles and newscasts, but I don’t think any of us in California fully understood the meaning of it until the last six months. California’s Mediterranean climate is naturally erratic, but in recent years the swings have been dramatic.
Many people know the childhood story of Goldilocks – the girl who became lost in the woods and decided to rummage through the home of a family of bears while they were away, testing their beds and sampling their food to find the one of each that was ‘just right.’
New Tools for Exploring Water – Past, Present & Future
Welcome to a New Year, Project WET Educators! The traditional season of gift-giving and thanks may have ended for you with the removal of lights and storing of decorations. But I’m hoping this Gazette may extend the season for you well into the New Year by highlighting a small treasure-trove of online tools and resources that have been recently released or updated – and can be used with Project WET activities.
The leaf buds on the blue oak outside my home office window are just beginning to swell with new life, even as spring wildflowers and daffodils are already on full display in the yard below. The flowers are all at least 3 weeks early this year, and the sea of green grass around them is already patched with large yellowish swathes of desiccation.
Exploring Water Infrastructure & Climate Resilience
Winter is coming. Every ‘Game of Thrones’ fan knows this dreaded warning and plea to all in the Seven Kingdoms to unite before its too late to counter a climate disaster complete with frozen zombies.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall; All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, Couldn’t put Humpty together again. ― Mother Goose
What a year this has been. Even before the shock of a how to function in a global pandemic has worn off, questions of how to deal with the virus, how education should be conducted this fall and how we deal with racial and social inequities in our society have boiled over on our streets and media streams.
“Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her and to wonder what was going to happen next…”
— Lewis Carroll, ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’
I suspect I’m not the only one feeling a bit like Alice after falling through our own rabbit hole in March to enter a disconcerting world of digital learning. I’m sure many of us now have first-hand experience with ‘all the running you can do just to keep in the same place’ and figuring out how to do “as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” You may also have found yourself arguing with our own versions of ”I’m not crazy, my reality is just different than yours” Cheshire cats in regards to wearing masks or debating our course forward until a COVID-19 vaccine is found.
I must admit I was initially feeling very pessimistic for the future prospects for encouraging direct, hands-on learning experiences in a world already fearing bugs, dirt, heat, cold, air quality and a variety of other phobias outside one’s door. Add to that a virus deadly enough to be declared a global pandemic reinforced by two months of mandatory stay at home orders and one has to wonder how hard it will be for people to directly engage with the world outside ever again. But, pessimism has given way to marvel at the ingenuity on all the ways educators and parents have found to modify and adapt to the online learning environment, including the continued use of Project WET activities with their students!
