[Mister C] What time is it?

[Group] It's "Science Time."

♪ Flow with science, science, science time.

♪ ♪ Let's all stop and just unwind ♪ ♪ One, two, three, four, here we go ♪ ♪ Learn so much your brain explodes ♪ ♪ Lessons so cool, so fresh ♪ ♪ Feats so big you'll lose your breath ♪ ♪ Learning facts of real cool stuff ♪ ♪ Stream for more can't get enough ♪ ♪ It's, it's science time ♪ ♪ It's fun you best believe ♪ ♪ Explore and learn new things ♪ ♪ Come and join me please ♪ I'm Mister C, and this super smart group is my science crew.

Working together with my crew makes learning so much fun.

Actually, you should join us.

Let's give science a try with a simple DIY.

Today, we're talking about streams and rivers.

What time is it?

It's "Science Time."

Welcome back to "DIY Science Time."

My name's Mister C, and I'm so excited that you're here to be part of our crew today.

Today, we're talking about water.

That's right, water.

Water is strong.

It can move mountains.

It can break down rock.

It can move soil.

It can create streams.

It can create rivers.

And that's what we're talking about.

We're doing x-stream science.

X-stream science.

X-stream science.

With a focus on stream science, because streams are awesome.

You can find them all around.

They're in your city, in your town.

And if you wanna follow along, grab these few materials to have some fun with me and the crew today.

Let's get this episode flowing.

We're going to build an erosion table to model weathering.

You're going to need a few materials to follow along.

Pan, watering can, damp sand, straws, water, ice cubes.

And don't forget to grab your rock solid science notebook.

A science notebook is a tool that every scientist should have because it gives us a place to record all of our learning.

Taking notes and being organized allows us to be better scientists.

A science notebook allows us to go back and review all of the data and information we've gathered during our experiments.

Plus, it allows us to share results with other scientists who might be interested in learning more about what we've discovered.

Whenever you see the notebook pop up on the screen, like this, it's a reminder that this is a good place for us to jot down new information during the show.

I've already added a title and a list of materials for today's activity, but our crew is still going to have lots of information to collect and organize as we go through our experiments.

Most importantly, the more you use a science notebook, the better you'll get at taking notes and recording data.

If you don't have a science notebook already, download a copy of Mister C's science notebook from the website.

To explore weathering, we're gonna set this up so that we can build a landscape where it's going to rain on, and then we're going to create a river right here in our little pan.

First thing though, we wanna raise the pan up just a little bit so we have a nice slope so that the water can flow down and collect down here at the bottom of the pan.

Now you're gonna take your wet sand... (upbeat music) And create a landscape of your choice.

(upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) Got a little bit of mountain over here.

Got it sloped.

And now what I'm gonna do is I'm going to take my finger and I'm going to drag and create the start of a stream or a riverbed.

(upbeat music continues) There we go.

So our stream has already started to form.

We can maybe have another little one over here.

And essentially, this would stay just like this, but Mother Nature has her own plans.

She uses the power of weathering, which is to break down things so that it will change the landscape over time.

Also, we're gonna add our ice cube over here on this little mountaintop.

Let that sit there.

That'll melt also over time.

But here we go.

I have a huge watering can, but I'm afraid that if I try to pour this over here, it's actually going to just destroy the entire landscape 'cause it's a lot of water that would come pouring out of that.

So I made my own watering can with a two liter bottle.

I popped some holes in the top of it, and those little holes are going to allow me to essentially spray my landscape with water and control it a little bit better than the large watering can.

Now I'm going to make it rain on our landscape just a little bit, just a light rain.

You can instantly see, as it's raining, the water begins to move.

Whoa, heavy rain down on the bottom.

As you can see here, the water broke down the sand, the ground here, and it started to move down our ramped slope.

And as it does that, it's breaking down through weathering.

The rain is weathering the stone and the rock.

That over time causes this river to form and it moves sediment through here.

So weathering breaks it down, erosion moves it around.

And deposition, that is the act of it being deposited elsewhere.

And as you can see, it moved down here.

And earlier, we had nothing down here on this area.

So this shows us that weathering broke it down, erosion moved it around, and deposition dropped it down.

♪ Weathering breaks it down ♪ ♪ Erosion moves it around ♪ ♪ Deposition drops it down ♪ ♪ Uh, uh, uh, uh ♪ ♪ Uh ♪ Weathering.

All right, so with all of that said, let's give it another try.

Let's pour some more water.

And if you don't like this rainfall, you can change your cap and poke different arrangements of holes into it.

And this one is just a single hole, so let's just make it rain.

(imitates rain pattering) Lots of rain.

(upbeat music) And what's super interesting is it, at first, the water was spreading out the riverbed.

It was getting wider because it was being weathered and then it was eroding away the sediment and dropping it further down.

You can still see it right here.

Our path goes right through here.

That's so cool.

And we have all of this being deposited from the rainfall.

Here we have a glacier that's sitting up here on top of the hill.

This will start to melt and it'll start breaking down the soil and sediment here.

And it might even just slide and move an entire amount of soil and land with it.

But you also have wind that can weather the stones.

And we're gonna give this a try.

Our sand is a little bit damp from all of the rain.

And I'm gonna blow really hard because wind can weather stone and sand as well.

Here we go.

(Mister C blowing) It worked.

(Mister C blowing) (Mister C blowing) (Mister C blowing) (Mister C laughing) Wind weathers things as well.

Did you see that?

It's on my glasses.

But that just shows you the power of wind.

It can weather the rock.

Erosion moves it, and deposition drops it down.

Erosion.

♪ Weathering breaks it down ♪ ♪ Erosion moves it around ♪ ♪ Deposition drops it down ♪ ♪ Say what ♪ Streams play an important role in shaping the Earth's surface.

These flowing bodies transport water and sediments from one location to another.

How does that happen?

I'm glad you asked.

There are two fundamental processes that cause streams to alter the landscape, erosion and deposition.

Erosion occurs when a natural force, like wind, water, or ice, wear away and transports soil, rock, and sediment from one place to another.

In a stream, water moves across rocks.

This friction removes and breaks down the soil and rock, which is moved to a new location.

The more energy the water has, the faster the water moves and is able to carry the sediment.

But when the stream loses energy and slows down, it will deposit the sediments.

Erosion and deposition are essentially opposites.

Erosion wears away the rock and soil, while deposition is the process where sediment is laid down in a new spot.

Let's explore the water cycle.

Use a permanent marker to draw the water cycle on a plastic bag.

Include water collection, evaporation, condensation, and precipitation.

(upbeat music) Pour a 1/3 cup of water into the bag and add a drop of blue food coloring.

Now tape your bag to a sunny window.

Check your water cycle bag at different times over the next few days.

Are you able to see water droplets growing on the inside of the bag?

Do you see water streaks running down the inside of the bag and collecting at the bottom?

You're experiencing the stages of the water cycle that take place on Earth.

According to the Geographic Names Information System, there's no official difference between rivers, streams, or creeks.

So no matter what you call them, they all represent water flowing on Earth.

With that said, we do commonly categorize rivers based on their size, flow characteristics, and the environments they flow through.

Some common types of rivers include mountain rivers.

These rivers start high in the mountains.

They're usually fast and cold, rushing over rocks and through narrow valleys.

Plains rivers.

These rivers flow through flat lands, or plains.

They're slower and wider than mountain rivers, winding their way across the landscape.

Coastal rivers.

These rivers are found near the coast.

They're shorter than other rivers and are often affected by the tides of the ocean.

Tributaries.

These aren't exactly a type of river, but they're important.

Tributaries are smaller rivers or streams that flow into bigger ones.

Think of them as branches on a tree that each add more water to the main river.

No matter what you call it, these bodies of water have got some really cool flow.

[Mister C] Career connections.

My name is Christine Szymanski.

I work for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and the Division of Natural Areas & Preserves.

And within that, I work for the Ohio Scenic River Program.

I'm an ecological analyst, and I am the Central Ohio Stream Quality Monitoring Coordinator.

(lighthearted music) Most of what I study in the river are macroinvertebrates.

So it's a big word.

Macro just means it's big enough that you can see it and pick it up.

And an invertebrate is any animal without a backbone.

So we're not looking at fish or amphibians.

We're looking a lot at insect larvae, crayfish, animals like that.

So we have a few go-to materials for our sampling protocols.

So we have a kick seine net, which is like a three foot by three foot net that is a seine, so that when you put into the river, you can disturb the substrate at the bottom of the stream.

That stuff gets into the water column and then will hit the net and you can collect it.

So that's our main sampling tool.

(upbeat music) We also have a turbidity stick, or a total suspended solid stick, TSS tube.

And that is very simple tool that can show how many suspended solids you have in a water column.

So we don't want too many suspended solids in the stream 'cause it can impact the quality of life for the macroinvertebrate and the fish.

So what is a good indication of river health for this in this sense, like- So the best reading would be to be able to see the dot from the very top still.

-So that's a yard?

-So it's 30, yeah, 36 inches.

And then we actually do have a chart that will tell us, if we're at 24 inches, how many milligrams per liter of suspended solids it has.

Oh, that's cool, that's cool.

Yeah.

And so it's a very easy way to test in the stream, in the field, as opposed to having to take a sample back to a lab and run it that way.

So we look for macroinvertebrates because they have different sensitivities to pollutant levels in a stream.

So depending on what we can see when we're doing a sample, we can tell, generally speaking, if the river's doing well or not.

Macroinvertebrates are important for the stream because they are the basis of the food web.

Not only in the river, but on the landscape as well next to the river.

But yeah, let's see what we got.

[Christine] Woo-hoo.

Oh.

-Ooh, what is that?

-Yeah.

(chuckles) It's a green fly.

So you've seen those things that look like giant mosquitoes that sometimes they get trapped in the house because they're attracted to lights.

[Mister C] Yeah.

So that's the larvae.

That's just a fly.

(upbeat music) To identify the animals in our sample, we have a very simple line drawing identification sheet.

And basically we teach people what I like to say the three Bs.

So we teach them their behavior, so if they're swimming, if they're walking.

We teach them about their breathing, so where their gills are, or if you don't see gills.

Either of those can help with identification.

And then backside, so do they have tails?

Do they have tail hooks?

What's going on at the very back of the animal?

So those are just visual cues and, like, behavior cues that we use to help identify.

This is one of my favorites.

Ooh.

[Colleague] What's that guy?

Why don't you tell me?

(colleague laughing) (Christine laughing) It looks like a beetle of some sort.

It is a beetle.

Is it a riffle beetle?

It is.

Yay, my first identification.

So often when we go work in the stream, for safety, you don't wanna be by yourself.

So we will have another colleague with us.

Sometimes there'll be somebody from our region.

Sometimes we'll work with other regions.

You know, they'll come down and see our river systems or we'll go and help them with their rivers.

But we're normally at least a buddy system.

I would tell 10-year-old Christine that you can make creaking a career.

The fact that you can learn more about the natural resources and still get to play basically every day and bring that enthusiasm and that kind of wonder about the natural world and share that with other people.

A field guide is a collection of information, observations, illustrations, and scientific information that can be shared about a particular area or region.

You can create a scientific tool like this yourself to keep track of observations and track changes that may be occurring in a particular area.

The following items are things we included about a nearby stream: the name of the stream and where it's located.

We included details about the river's physical features, like how fast it's flowing and the types of rocks and soil in the area.

There's so much to add.

Are there any trails or parks nearby?

Is there any litter or other pollution?

You know, this looks really similar to our science notebook, Mister C. How cool is that?

Did you know the Nile River is the world's longest river?

It flows through 11 different countries.

At 4,132 miles long, this remarkably huge river has done a lot to support the places it flows through throughout history.

The Nile nourishes agricultural soil, serves as a transportation route, provides nutrition, and more.

The Nile was vital to ancient Egypt's civilization and still supports this area today.

There's no deNile-ing that.

(upbeat music) Let's create a watershed.

Take a piece of white paper and crumple it up.

Unfold the paper and partially smooth it out.

You'll want to keep it slightly crumpled so you can see the small ridges or high points and also the valleys, which are the low points.

It represents your watershed.

Let's locate the ridge lines.

Use a washable blue marker and color along the ridge lines.

The blue color from the marker will help you follow the path of precipitation.

(upbeat music continues) Spray the water over your land to create a rainstorm.

Only spray it once.

The goal is to represent a gentle rain.

Wait a moment to see how the water moves on your map.

The blue marker will help you see where the water travels and collects in your watershed.

Has the water begun to collect somewhere in your watershed?

If not, then slightly mist again until the precipitation starts collecting in a pond or lake.

As your rainfall accumulates, observe the pathways where the excess rainfall travels throughout your watershed.

(chuckles) It worked.

We are building a filtration system.

Just like Mother Earth, when it rains, it pours.

And when it pours, it gets saturated into the ground and it goes down, down, down, and it gets filtered.

That's right, we can build one of those too using a simple bottle like this and some materials you probably have at your house.

Let's get started.

First, we're going to cut the top, or should I say the bottom off of this bottle.

(upbeat music) (Mister C laughing) The scissors are too big.

Hold on.

Maybe these will work.

So we're gonna try to cut the bottom off again.

There we go.

(upbeat music continues) I have the bottom from another bottle, which we're going to use to stack this up so that we can have our filtration system standing up.

Now, the first thing I wanna do is I wanna put a paper towel onto the bottom of my system.

And I'm gonna actually fold it up so it's a nice little square.

And then I'm gonna rubber band it nice and tight.

(upbeat music continues) That is on there really, really good.

Now, before I get into adding my levels of rocks and filters, I wanna talk about a couple of things.

One, all of these rocks and things other than the charcoal have been rinsed.

So I went outside and I put my fine sand underwater and I cleaned it off because it was really muddy to begin with, and I wanted to make sure that wasn't impacting or influencing us from filtering this muddy water.

So I cleaned up all my rocks so I'll have minimal dirt.

The charcoal is a natural filtration system and it's gonna help get out some of the yuckies and all the really small fine particles.

But this is pretty chunky.

And so we're going to put it into a Ziploc bag and crumble it up and kind of make it into more of a dust.

(upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) Okay, I think we've got it crumbled up pretty good.

It's not completely like a fine dust, but the finer you can make this, the better it's going to help filter your system.

And you get a little dirty.

But the thing is we're gonna pour it out here first and then we'll have all of our materials ready to put into our filtration system.

Now Mother Earth does this naturally by having layers of rock, and soil, and clay, and all of these different pieces.

We are going to try to mimic that and see if it'll actually work.

I'm gonna start with some cotton balls in the bottom.

I'm gonna take my tweezers.

I'm just gonna kind of push them down just so we have nice and flat.

And I'm gonna take some pink rocks.

And I'm adding these because we're gonna add the charcoal next and I just wanted to have a layer of rocks so that the charcoal doesn't fall down into the cotton and kind of get stuck down at the bottom, the mouth of the bottle.

(upbeat music continues) There we go.

And now we're gonna add some fine sand.

(upbeat music continues) We can see our layers really, really well.

Actually, you can do single layers of everything, but I'm going to add a second layer of charcoal, another layer of fine sand, and then some coarse sand up top.

And the question is, will it work?

And you can already see that our water is pretty gross.

It's pretty brown, it's pretty yucky.

I made some mud water earlier, and we're gonna see if we can get it to clean up here with our filter.

You can see the water moving down through the filtration system.

We're getting close to hitting, oh, oh, oh, we have water coming through.

It's definitely lighter than this brown filthy water.

Now, how much lighter it's going to be, I'm not sure, but we're gonna give it a try.

Ooh, now it's turning, like, really dark.

So what I think's happening is that I didn't rinse the charcoal.

I think I'm pulling some of the dark from the charcoal through here because it doesn't look muddy like our water.

It's more black like the charcoal is.

And this is what I love about this.

What we're gonna do is I'm gonna let this drip for a little bit, I'm gonna dump it out, and we're going to start pouring some more water in because we're kind of flushing our filtration system.

See, Earth, the water comes down from the sky, it hits the ground, it's moving over the ground, it's eroding rock and soil, going into streams and rivers, but it also gets pulled down through the ground and it goes into the water table.

And over time, as the muddy part gets cleared up, it becomes clearer and clearer over time.

And what's really neat and interesting is the top rocks, they're of course, they're big, they're larger, they're catching the debris.

I see like little sticks and like little pieces of leaves that are getting stuck up here.

So it filters the bigger stuff.

Then the sand and the charcoal start filtering that finer material, and then eventually it comes out hopefully clear.

Look at that.

It's actually working.

We flushed the system a few times, and now the muddy water that's going through is actually coming out clear.

This was all from the charcoal that was running off.

But now that it's been filtered and flushed out, it's coming out really nice and clean.

Remember, you can't drink this.

This is for demonstration purposes only.

And it models how water is able to be filtered as it moves through the soil, rocks, clay, and down to our water table.

Have some fun, make some variations, and build your own filtration system today.

Earthworms are tiny soil engineers.

They create natural drainage systems as they tunnel through the ground.

These passages help rain soak into the soil instead of washing it away, reducing erosion and keeping the land healthy and stable.

Now that's a job I could really dig.

The Mississippi is the chief river system of North America.

It flows approximately 2,340 miles through the heart of the United States.

It starts from its source in Minnesota and flows to its delta in Louisiana in the Gulf.

The watershed system that feeds this giant river is about 1.2 million square miles.

Sources for the river reach from the Allegheny Mountains in the east all the way to the Rocky Mountains in the west.

♪ Row, row, row the spot ♪ ♪ Gently down the stream ♪ ♪ Erosion is fun and should be done ♪ ♪ When exploring with your team ♪ Today was a busy day and we covered so many amazing things about rivers and streams.

I'm so happy to finally understand the difference between erosion and weathering.

You should try that erosion table experiment.

It looks messy and fun.

I wonder if changing the slope of the table would impact how quickly the landscape moves.

That might be one to do outside though.

Give it a try with a simple DIY.

Weathering breaks it down, erosion moves it around, deposition drops it down.

Into the science notebook.

That's right.

If you don't have one yet, grab a DIY Science Time Notebook online.

It'll help you keep track of all your experiments and all of the information you gather while working with your science crew.

Whether you're doing precipitation little water cycle bags, building a filtration system, or taking a field guide out to a local river to keep track of how it's changing over time, you have the ability to do all of that in your DIY Science Time Notebook.

Keep learning, keep exploring, keep having fun, and remember that science is wherever you are.

Now, join me one more time in honor of all the rivers and the streams as we do our flow.

♪ Weathering breaks it down ♪ ♪ Erosion moves it around ♪ ♪ Deposition drops it down ♪ ♪ Wut, wut, wut ♪ See you, everybody.

Bye.

Streams are powerful.

They flow.

What did you say?

Filter water.

But not water like you think.

(Mister C laughing) ♪ Weathering broke it down ♪ ♪ Erosion moves it around ♪ ♪ Deposition breaks ♪ Oops, wrong.

(Mister C laughing) Our watershed.

The power of nature.

The power of nature.

♪ Learning fun for everyone ♪ ♪ Everyone ♪ But for you to join along, you're gonna need a (indistinct).

I'm just glad it worked.

That's so stressful.