A dripping tap

In your book, Our Wondrous World (Chapter 4), we learn that water is a precious treasure. The class has already looked for dripping taps at school. But how much water can be lost, drop by drop? Even a small leak can waste a lot of water over time.

Your book's activity: find a dripping tap, or make a small hole in a used bottle full of water. Collect the drips in a glass and note how long it takes to fill the glass. Then work out how many glasses would fill in one day.

Here is how to work it out. A day has 24 hours. If the glass fills in one hour, then in one day the tap fills 24 glasses. If the glass fills in half an hour (30 minutes), it fills 2 glasses every hour, so in a day it fills 2 times 24, which is 48 glasses!

You will be surprised how quickly the water adds up, and how much is wasted without anyone noticing. So tell an adult about any dripping tap, so that it can be fixed.