Great Salt Lake activities you can do

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You can do any of these activities at home at low cost or using things you already have. If something wrong happens, Mr. Hall is not responsible. You can print this sheet out. If you have any more activities you can think of, you may get your parents to email Mr. Hall with your ideas.

  1. Floating Things
    Get a small bowl or pan and put water in it. Get some small objects and see which float and which don't. Then add a bunch of salt to the bottom. Now see which onjects float and which don't. How is this like the Great Salt Lake?
  2. Evaporation
    Get a small bowl or pan and put water with some salt at the bottom. Let the water sit for several hours. You can check back every hour or so if you want. You can measure each time how much the water has evaporated. How many hours does it take to evaporate all the water? How much salt is left? How is this like the Great Salt Lake.
  3. Blanket Falling
    Get a small (or large if you want) blanket. Have some people hold it and you and others can put objects on the blanket until the other people can't hold it. How many objects or how much weight did it take before the blanket fell? How is this like the rain or snow clouds that pass over the Great Salt Lake and get the extra moisture?
  4. Brine Shrimp
    Ask a pet store if they have brine shrimp eggs. Follow the instructions and see if they hatch. How long are you able to keep them alive? What do they do and look like? What do you have to feed them? You can also get dead brine shrimp and look at it. What does it look like? What things help it to live in the lake?
  5. Make a terminal Lake
    Use a garden hose or other water source and make a small river outside or inside using a dish and some dirt. What happens to some water if you close it off so that nothing goes out of it? Wait a while and see if it evaporates a lot. What is left behind? Try it with salt and see if that is left behind too. How is it like the Great Salt Lake or the salt flats?
  6. Salt Plant
    Get a small plant and put a lot of salt in its soil or on it. What happens to it after a few days? Can it stand the salt like some of the Great Salt Lake plants?
  7. Muddy and Clean water
    Get a bunch of muddy water and dirt and put it in a pitcher or bowl. Get some kind of strainer and hold it over a dish. Pour the water and dirt out over the strainer so that the dish below it catches the water you pour. What is the difference? What does it look like? How is this like a wetland?
  8. Stinky water
    Put some plants in some water and leave it for several days. What happens? What grows in it? How is it like the Great Salt Lake? How does it relate to brine flies and brine shrimp?
  9. Bird List
    Go around your neighborhood and make a list of the kinds of birds you see. How many of them can you find around the Great Salt Lake too? What helps them to be able to live in both places?
  10. Floating Things two
    Get two bowls of water or small dishes and put different salt amounts in each. Which one can more things float in and what floats? How is it like the Great Salt Lake?
  11. Write a journal
    Imagine that you are a pioneer on one of the islands (you can live there or be an explorer). What are you going to take with you? What will you eat or drink? What will you write notes about? How will you travel?
  12. Cleaning up
    Clean up your room or another room and see how long it takes you and how much money. Call up a cleaning service and ask how much money and time it takes for them to clean rooms. Subtract the differences to find how much more or less it takes. How is this like the job that brine flies provide for the lake?
  13. Color the Water
    Put red food coloring in a bowl of water. How long does it take to turn red. Do the same with some blue food coloring. Can you arrange it so that you can have both red and blue food coloring separate in a bowl withoout mixing? How would it relate to the Great Salt Lake?
  14. Survey
    Ask people if they have heard about the Great Salt Lake and put which ones have and which ones haven't. You can also do a survey about what people think about the lake. Put your answers on some kind of graph like those talked about on the website.
  15. Lake Bonneville
    Make your own model of Lake Bonneville inside or outside using water and something that keeps it as a lake like dirt. Then wreck one of the sides so that a lot of water goes out. How much water is left and what happens to it? How is this like what happenend in Lake Bonneville?
  16. Islands
    Make a little model in a dish with land, water, and some islands. What happens if you put in some more water? Which islands stay? What happens after you leave the water for a while and some evaporates? Try different places and sizes for the island and see what happens. How does it relate to the Great Salt Lake.
  17. Salt Uses
    Go around your house and try to find how many ways you can see salt being used. Make a list. How many ways do you count? Go to a grocery store and see how many different kinds of salt you can find there too.
  18. Zoo animals
    Go to a zoo and write a list of what animals you find that you can also find at the Great Salt Lake. Why aren't some of the animals able to live there? Why are those that can able to?
  19. Bird Clips
    Get some different kinds of clips like clothes pins, hair clips, etc. Put some things on the ground and see how well you can pick them up with different kinds of clips. Which are most like some of the birds' beaks at the Great Salt Lake? Which shapes are best for getting the food that certin birds would eat?
  20. Make a wetland
    Make a small pond in your backyard or make a model wetland in a container. Leave it outside. What things come to live there or what plants grow? How did they get there? How is it like or not like a real wetland?
  21. Dairy Farm
    Go to a dairy farm or ask someone about another product. Learn where they get the product or how they produce it, where they take it, and how much it is used. How is it like or not like some things that come from the Great Salt Lake?
  22. Make a mud flat
    Put some dirt in a small dish and put water over it. Wait until it evaporates a lot. What happens? How does the dirt feel? How is it like or not like a real mud flat?
  23. Write an animal story
    Mr. Hall wrote the story about Floyd. Imagine that you are a kind of animal at the Great Salt Lake. Write a story from the point of view of that animal.
  24. Pet on a Boat
    Put your dog or cat on a board or somethng like a boat. What happens? How were the pioneers able to get bison to Antelope islands that way? How are people able to take other animals to Antelope Island like Antelope or bighorn sheep?
  25. Look at the Sand
    Look at different kinds of sand by your house using a magnifying glass. What do they look like and what shape are they? How are your sands like or not like oolitic sand?