Discover the special properties of water as you guide colorful plastic balls along the water channels.
Send a colorful ball soaring through the air atop a jet of water, unleash a misty cloud of fog. Watch balls tumble over waterfalls, squirt high into the area, and travel along a system of pulleys and tunnels. Create your own unique fountain at the Waterfall Wall, and listen to the soft melody of a quiet storm in our Rain Shanty.
For visitors under 5, Little WaterWays offers a special area designed for toddlers and preschoolers. Explore concepts like empty and full, sink and float, or wet and dry while playing at the over-sized water table. Practice the physical skills of lifting and pouring while developing hand-eye coordination.
Children learn about the ways in which water pressure and gravity influence the direction water flows. Water play also helps to develop important social skills. Children share balls, waterwheels, and other materials. They cooperate with each other as they guide the balls along streams, tunnels, and tubes. And they imitate the play of other children, using it as inspiration for their own experiments with the water.
Water Treatment System
Delightedly soggy children squeal and splash, and dripping balls fly overhead, in CDM’s ever-popular WaterWays water play area. Savvy parents save a visit to the exhibit for the end of their day, and many bring a change of kid-sized clothes, because staying bone-dry is generally not on a child’s agenda.
Water is an amazing medium for learning, but getting wet is not the only challenge involved in creating a water-based exhibit. Healthy water is a paramount concern. Since CDM’s exhibits are designed in-house, solving the engineering problems involved in water filtration and sanitation, in such an unusual setting, falls to its amazing exhibits team.
Behind the scenes, or rather beneath the WaterWays slip-resistant floor, is an installation that is an exhibit unto itself… CDM’s water treatment station. A 10-horse power pump is at the heart of the station, recirculating WaterWays’ 850 gallons of water every five minutes and passing it through two separate filtration systems, which capture any material larger than one micron. (The human eye cannot see anything smaller than 40 microns.) In addition, two sanitation systems work together to guarantee that water quality meets, and often exceeds, standards and codes for spas and pools: rather than chlorine, which is irritating to eyes and skin, the systems utilize ozone and bromine to maintain an ORP level between 650 and 750. The pH level is automatically maintained between 7.3 and 7.6, and water hardness is maintained between 250 and 300 ppm. The San Jose Water Company gave generously of its expertise, resources, and manpower to help to create this unique, safe, state-of-the-art water system.
So next time your child is happily experimenting with the physics of water, rest assured that the exhibit under the floor is working 24/7 to guarantee that the experience is both educational and healthy.
