William Dillon
Posted: Friday, March 27, 2009 10:28 pm

Aubrey Stafford, 10, and Danny Lively, 8, look on as Mason Kolterman, 6, removes his homemade thermometer from a can of ice water during a lesson on pressure and expansion at River Bend Nature Center on Friday. (William Dillon/Daily News)

bdillon@faribault.com

FARIBAULT – The list of supplies read like a MacGyver kit for kids.

Plastic soda bottles, sans labels. Play-Doh. Food coloring. Straws. A pitcher of room temperature water. A bowl of steaming hot water. An old coffee can filled with ice water and a few shakes of salt.

For the children attending their last day of spring break camp at River Bend Nature Center on Friday, it all came together as a lesson in pressure and expansion as they made their own homemade thermometers.

After filling their bottles halfway with water, coloring it and inserting the straw, the children used Play-Doh to seal off the top tightly around the straw. Shrouding the activity under a lesson in science, Leah Penn Boris and other naturalist educator interns at the center displayed how pressure and expansion made their “thermometers” work.





As the air pressure increased or decreased inside the bottle due to the hot water or chilling water that surrounded it, the children watched as the levels on their “thermometers” — the straws — rose and fell.

Friday, the last day of the three-day spring break camp for the children, capped off a week of learning all about wild weather.

Wednesday focused on air, wind, clouds and tornadoes. Thursday included lessons on rain, water cycles and floods. Friday’s focus was temperatures and thunderstorms.

As put by Laura Ritenour, a naturalist educator intern at the center, “it was fun with a purpose.”

“We wanted it to be educational because everything we do at River Bend is educational,” she said. “But we can really take advantage of all the resources that we have here.”



— Managing Editor William Dillon can be reached at 333-3131 or bdillon@faribault.com.