A Bit of Morning Conversation

First, some background...

1. The past two mornings on the way to school, Garett has been asking me some questions that I told him I couldn't really answer and he needed to ask his dad (How does a wastewater treatment plant work? and How does the power plant on campus work and why does it have offices in it?)

2. Last night was our annual "sleep beneath (beside) the tree" night. The kids set up their little tents and were snugly warm while Garey and I got the adult sleeping bags on the new air mattress. Now an aside - the new mattress was great since we didn't end up on the floor this morning, the mattress is still nice and filled up! However, it STINKS like new plastic.... most of the night I could ignore it, but the occasional whiff of plastic smell in the middle of the night didn't aid in a night of good sleep!

Anyways, back to the story of morning conversation...

After sleeping by the tree, we woke up and had some interesting family conversation. The conversation finally got around to Garett remembering he had questions to ask his dad. Well, after having his wastewater treatment plant question answered (complete with the stinky pond which elicited many giggles!), of course he had to ask about how a drinking water plant worked. Well, in one of the steps of the treatment, some chemicals called flocculants are added to the water which aid in the dirt removal. Well, when Garett heard the word flocculants he said "there are birds in the water??" (think FLOCK)

Needless to say we had to disabuse him of the notion that birds are not used in the water treatment process.

So now our weekend is planned with water cleaning experiments to learn about settling and filtering.

Ha, ha... I just heard from the kitchen (I'm still laying on the air mattress) that Alum is one of the chemicals used as a flocculant. As I happen to have a bottle of Alum in with my spices, Garey got it out to show Garett. Garett had to ask if it was something that we ate, and if we don't eat it, then WHY is it in the pantry!!!

What a morning! It bodes for an interesting weekend!