What happens when pollution, such as gasoline and chemicals, mixes with rain water and soaks into the ground? It may disappear from sight but it doesn't really disappear. Kids at a recent East Point water festival saw what happens when they performed this delicious little experiment recreated for NFK by Oliver Wood, 5, of Marietta.

Ingredients:

A clear plastic cup (or a glass)

Chocolate chips

Sprite

Vanilla ice cream

Candy sprinkles

Edible food coloring dye

Directions:

1) Rock/gravel/water layer —- Pour a small handful of chocolate chips into the bottom of a clear cup to represent rocks and gravel. Use Sprite to represent water. Completely cover the chocolate chips and then add just a splash or two more of Sprite. This symbolizes your "aquifer," an underground layer of earth, gravel or porous stone that yields water.

2) Confining layer —- Drop a scoop of ice cream on top of the Sprite. Let it float on top. In Georgia, this "confining layer" could be the hard red clay that is not very permeable, which means it's hard for pollution to get through the clay.

3) Porous layer —- Create a top layer with candy sprinkles to represent grass and easy-to-get-through topsoil.

4) Pollution —- Squeeze several drops of blue or red food coloring into the top of the cup. If the bottom layer changes color, the aquifer has been polluted. That may taste just fine in this experiment, but real pollution would not be something you would want to drink.