Tre' at the Salton Sea

Tre's Experiment

Water Pollution Study

Tre' at the Salton Sea

• 
  Tre' is checking water from Mexico to the Arctic studying rivers, lakes and oceans for levels of pollution.
• He's looking at
• Dissolved Oxygen - available oxygen for fish to breath
• Nitrites - by product of acid rain
• Nitrates - Feces, leaves, organic build up
• PH - Acid levels
• Turbidity - Looks at erosion deposited in the water
• Water Temperature

Tre' takes a water sample with an official United Nations water test kit.





He uses the water sample and puts some into test beakers.

He then adds chemicals to the beakers that changes the color of the water showing the particular results.

He also verifies his chemistry samples with easier test strips to give a quality check.


All the kids use the electric thermometer to give air temperature.

Tre' taking original sample and putting it into one of several samples.

Tre' Recording information.

Tre' doing quality check with a test strip.

Dead fish and thermometer

The Salton Sea has a very high salt content. It was a good place to start testing because the water is warm and not lacking pollution. So almost any test going North will show variations.
Josh watching his experiment float away.
Josh Recording his experiment.

Josh's Experiment

Josh's Experiment

Josh is starting Kindergarten this fall so we needed to keep his experiment simple.

He has a thermometer with a car float attached to it. He throws the car into the water and measures the temperature. He also has a digital thermometer that he records the air temperature.

Seems simple but I've never known a five year old to record the air and water temperature of rivers, lakes, oceans from Mexico to the Arctic. I hope he loves science as much as I do.

Joshua's Science Experiment

While on the arctic adventure each of the kids are doing science experiments. We hope to win every category in the school science fair next year.

We take a picture of the kids at each location and performing the experiments so the judges know the kids did each experiment and collected the data.

We left for the Arctic two days late. When we finally started North we first went South to Mexico. An adventure to the Arctic would not be complete unless the adventures traveled completely across the United States, Canada and of course Alaska.

30 minutes into the trip we arrived at the Salton Sea.

Risk Family Arctic Tour 2009

Papa (D.J. Risk Jr.) and his four children (Reagan, Tre', Madison, Joshua) start out on their epic adventure to the Arctic Ocean from Palm Desert, California.

Reagan started out the trip in the pace car with her mother (Heidi). Heidi follows the arctic adventure rig to Salt Lake City, Utah to make sure nothing falls off, explodes, or D.J. doesn't leave any child behind.

Tre', Josh, Madi and the dog Maliboo travel in the arctic adventure rig where dad makes sure they have enough activities to stay busy. Do three televisions, two game cube systems, five ipods systems qualify for enough activities?

When we are traveling by landmarks or National Parks the kids are required to turn off the screens and look out the window. I give the 5 cents to 25 cents for spotting wildlife or natural formations. Waterfalls are 5 cents for a small one and 10 cents for a large one. Highly unusual animals or formations are worth a whooping 50 cents. The Grand prize of $10 goes to anyone who spots one of the great predators such as a bear, wolf, eagle.