How to Make a Homemade Water Filter

Hello everyone, today I will be showing you a fun and easy water filter that you can build at home with a few materials! Before I get into all of the steps... I wanted to share my information on the topic of "Countries Not Having Access to Clean Water". I think that this is a very important topic that should be talked upon more because everyone deserves clean drinking water no matter where they live.

Now, you must be wondering now, which countries don’t have access to clean drinking water? Well there are top 3 countries that don’t have fresh water. First, we have Ethiopia. Ethiopia has a population of 116.4 million people but 60% of the population doesn’t have access to clean drinking water at all. Most of their water is always contaminated, unhealthy, keeps making families sick and doesn’t have a lot of sanitation in it as well. Because of this, there is a lot of defecation (a discharge of feces that happens from a body) happening in Ethiopia and 22% of people are affected by defecation there. Next we have Papua New Guinea. In Papua New Guinea they have 51% of the population there drinking water that comes from the surface meaning they drink from ponds, rivers etc. 87% of their population don’t have enough sanitation which is really sad to think about that people in other countries are actually living like this. They don’t even have toilets to use which is another sad thing and we should try our best to fix these issues. Just like Ethiopia, they also have defecation going around. But the good thing is that their water has become a little cleaner. Finally, we have The Republic of Chad. 61% of people that are living there don’t have access to clean water. It’s kind of the same as Ethiopia. 67% of people there are practising on how to fight/treat defecation which is a really good thing! The sad thing however is that there are less than half of the number for toilets and pit latrines in The Republic of Chad.

Moving on to which countries do have access to clean water. There are top 5 countries that have fresh water available to them. Starting off with the first one which is Switzerland. Switzerland has always had a very good geography and policy based on their water. They mostly get their water from the rain that happens (because it rains there a lot), fresh big lakes and the glaciers that always melt there provide them with more than enough water. Secondly we have Canada! Canada’s geography also has a lot of resources that we can get our water from. Such as Lake Ontario. The way that Canada always seems to have fresh water is because they have a really nice tap water supply, they keep a lot of cleanliness in their water and provide a lot of safety with the water they decide to give out to everyone. Thirdly we have the United Kingdom. They too always have fresh water because they have many freshwater lakes, a lot of resources for water, they always replenish their water and they are also one of the countries that have a lot of rain. I feel like we should provide all of these ways to the countries that actually are in need of good water. Anyway… now we have New Zealand. New Zealand also, like Switzerland, have very big glaciers in their oceans that melt and provide a ton of water. The people that live there also realize the importance of water and they give in a lot of effort to keep their water healthy and fresh. Last but not least we have Germany. Germany’s ways are that they have always had a law to keep their water clean, they get most of their water from natural lakes, they ALSO have glaciers that melt and give them water and their country has a list of what their tap water should contain in it.

Since we are talking about the benefits of water and why everyone should have clean water, I'm going to be talking about some of the benefits that clean water can give you. Clean and fresh water provides you with a healthier life, children would receive much better nourishment, children would do much more better in school and also adults would do good in their everyday lives, your income for your family would improve a lot and you wouldn't get sick so easily!

Now for the exciting part! You might be wondering at this point that well, what CAN we do to make sure everyone in the world is getting good water? Here are some of the things that YOU can help to do:

- United Nation talk about the water crisis each year on March 22 (also known as World Water Day)

-They provide water for the people that are locked up in poverty or for people that are poor

-Helping out a lot of families that have kids

-You can participate in the run/walk that goes on for the “Global 6K for Water” in order for people to have access to clean drinking water

-You can participate in the World Wide Vision to empower the people that already have clean water to help out other people who don’t have clean water

Let's get into the actual experiment side now. I am going to building a mini water filter so I can give you guys a little insight on what water filter's are capable of doing. Water filters can take out unwanted bacteria from the water, take out all of the impurities from it, take out the contamination from it, make the water much more cleaner and can just overall make the quality of the water 10x better! It's cool right? Ok, so now let's dive into the experiment and the procedure of it! :)

-1 plastic water bottle

-Cotton balls OR cotton in general

-Sand

-Charcoal

-Gravel/pebbles/small rocks

-X-Acto Knife

-Water

-A tall glass cup

Start off by gathering all of your supplies that you need.

For this part you are going to be grabbing your x-acto knife (be sure to use the knife VERY carefully) and cutting off the bottom part of the water bottle because in the large part of the water bottle you will be placing in everything. (REMEMBER to keep the bottom part of the bottle and to not throw it away because you will be needing it later on)

Now you are going to carefully place the top part of the bottle into a glass cup. Make sure to keep the cap part in the bottle and the upper part outside.

Grab your cotton and place it very flatly in the bottle. Make sure to have a lot of it because you don't want the sand, charcoal or etc. to go through the cotton and into the bottle.

Get a medium sized bowl and fill it up with sand just below the middle part of the bowl. Now you want to pour the sand in the bottle right on top of the cotton. Spread out the sand evenly on top of the cotton.

Get your charcoal and crush it with a hammer if it already isn't crushed because you don't want to have big blobs of it in the bottle, that might just block the water from going through. Crush it up to the point where it's close to being a powder type of thing. After doing that, pour in the crushed charcoal and make sure to spread it evenly on top of the sand.

Grab your 3 things which are gravel, pebbles and rocks. Start of by putting in the gravel, then the rocks and lastly the pebbles and make sure they are again spread out evenly on top of everything that's in the bottle.

I hope you remembered to keep the bottom part of the bottle because you will be needing that for the dirty water. I made the water dirty by adding in some dirt/soil in it. Just get a little bit of water but not too much but also not too less.

(I had taken a video of me pouring in the dirty water and it coming out clean but the video was too long so I put a picture instead)

Pour all of your water in the bottle and just wait and see if the water comes out clean or still dirty. For me, the water came out absolutely clean which means it was a success!

Now I will be explaining all of the science behind this experiment.

The reason why I added pebbles, rocks and gravel is because they take out many big sediments (a solid material in the water such as rocks or wood chips).

I added in sand because they take out all of the impurities from the water and make it less contaminated.

Charcoal is said to also be taking out contamination and impurities from the water so it's kind of the same as sand.

Cotton always filters/takes out dirty particles from the water and makes it very clean and drinkable.

I hope you all enjoyed this little experiment that I did and were able to get a successful result out of it!