MPC's STEAM Art Exhibit 2024

The Gravity / Air Pressure Approach

These Bee Water Stations use the same physics principle used in gravity feed water cooler stations for humans. The water reservoir (glass bottle) is inverted into the water catch tray. What keeps the water from spilling out all at once is the air pressure within the bottle relative to how much is displaced in the water catch tray. As the water evaporates in the water tray it will eventually reach a level where the water is lower than the base of the reservoir bottle. At this point an air bubble can now go up into the reservoir and a corresponding amount of water will replenish the water bowl below.

Input From Bee Keepers

We were visited by Bee Keepers during this project. They offered excellent advice! They advised keeping gaps between perching areas to no larger than 3/8 of an inch. To achieve this our students used shapes, pebbles or marbles for perching areas. Our Bee Keeper visitors also informed us that bees do not see the same color spectrum as humans, for instance bees see the color red as black. The Bee Keepers recommended using the colors blue/green and yellow/orange, as those are colors Bees can see quite well.

Aesthetics

We learned that bees will remember a water source and they will consistently return to that water source. With this in mind, our students wanted to create easy to identify, optically alluring water stations. They were able to achieve this goal by taking advantage of the unique, personalized styling capabilities that 3D Printers can provide.