I once helped develop an exhibition about water for the National Geographic
Society's Explorers Hall. We included the usual "water weight scale," which
visitors stepped on to find out how much water was in their own bodies. We
also purchased an interactive ground water model from a science supply
company. It included a hand pump to pull water through the soil profile and
up through various wells. With food coloring additives, it demonstrated how
pollution could seep into ground water, and the difficulty of "cleaning up"
dirty water from wells. We obtained water-use pie charts for each state from
USGS, and filled a flip book with them, so visitors could see where their
states' water supplies come from and how the water was used. We had a small
balanced scale, with a model farm and animals on one side and a  model of a
city on the other. We created a simple "water saver" computer game that
challenged visitors to decrease their water use. Finally, we stacked up 100,
one-gallon plastic jugs against the wall to show how much water the average
American uses in a day. While this wasn't intended to be interactive, people
loved to pose in front of it and take pictures, which, hopefully, made them
tell the story of the exhibit when they showed their vacation photos back
home. If you would like more information about any of these ideas, I can be
reached at [log in to unmask] Good luck with your exhibit.

Ceres Bainbridge
Exhibit Developer
Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum

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