You will need:
- Clean gravel
- Knife & scissors
- Large empty soda bottle (2-litre bottle will do)
- Ruler
- Duct tape
- Permanent marker
What if you could find out how much it has
rained in your neighbourhood just by creating
your own rain gauge?
INSTRUCTIONS
- Firstly, take your empty soda bottle and from the bottom measure 8.75 inches upwards.
- At 8.75 inches the bottle should mostly have started curving. Mark this spot and ask an adult to puncture a hole along this mark, with the help of a knife. Next, ask an adult to help to cut off the mouth of the bottle. Keep it aside for later use.
- Take your cut bottle and look for the area at the bottom of the bottle, where the lower part would have joined the rest of the bottle. It will be about 1.75 inches from the bottom.
- Mark this point and using a ruler, mark 10 points on
the bottle in the upward direction with 1 cm spacing between each marking. Also, mark the half-centimetre marks in between your markings. - Next fill you bottle with gravel till the gravel is at the ‘0’ mark.
- Take the cut-out mouth of the bottle and place it on the bottle upside down.
- Secure it with duct tape, so no water can get in from the sides. Pour water into it till the water level is at ‘0’ and place it outside in the open the next time it rains.
RESULT
Every time it rains, you will be able to measure how many centimetres of rainfall your area has received. But for every new rainfall ‘reset’ your rain gauge by ‘resetting’ the water level to ‘0’.
