School News
Randall's Farm
By Joanna Prettyman
What we did
When we went to Randall's Farm in Stewartby, Bedfordshire, we made a model of the water cycle which was extremely fun. Firstly, we made an aquifer. We used a coca cola bottle cut in half and put three sponges in the bottom half. We then filled it up with water. We then used the top half of the bottle, turned upside down and pushed it in to the sponges. To do this we had to put our fist into the top half of the bottle and water sprang out of the top like a spring. Some of us got very wet!
To make a more controllable spring we then put the top of a thin tube into the aquifer and the other part into a drain pipe, and the water ran down like it had just rained and it was running down a mountain.
We also looked at different types of soil. There were three types of soil: sand, clay and chalk. The sandy soil felt exactly like sand, the clay soil was REALLY messy and difficult to separate and the chalk was very soft.
After that we went to see a pile of soil. We used a tube and a mallet, the mallet was to bash the tube in the ground, then we filled the tube up with water to see which soil drained the water first. We used a stopwatch to time it. The quickest time was for the chalk. It only took 8 seconds. Wow!
3 things I learnt
The first thing that I learnt at Randall's Farm was that chalk drains water very quickly. The second thing I learnt was that clay takes a very long time to drain water and the third thing that I learnt was that the aquifer is a lot more complicated that I had thought!
What I enjoyed the most
The activities we did were really fun but my favourite one was making the water cycle, despite getting wet. It was great fun and we learnt lots of things during the day. I enjoyed making the water cycle most of all because I enjoyed putting the water in the bottle and using the tube to make a river. I was amazed at how it worked!
