How to Make a Great Recirculating Stream Table on the Cheap (Less than $50)
Updated 12/1/17
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Original Post
I tend to get frustrated when science supply companies charge teachers like myself obscene prices for what turns out to be simplistic and often flimsy lab equipment. When I was a new teacher in need of stream tables for my fledgling geoscience classes, I had my school pony-up $100 a pop for what I thought were going to be awesome stream tables (I mean, for $100 they must be awesome, right??) They turned out to be nothing more than long plastic troughs that were designed to have buckets poured over them while draining to the grass! Not exactly what I had envisioned. Necessity led me to modify those first tables by adding pumps, sumps and tubing. Those tables have worked quite well for the past ten years but are now showing their age (and I'm still mad that $5 worth of plastic cost our school $400, not to mention the pumps I had to buy out of pocket).
Fast-forward 10 years and geoscience classes have exploded in popularity on my campus. We now offer something like 17 sections with five different teachers. Sharing four stream tables amongst all of us wasn't going to cut-it so I decided to try my hand at making a cheap, DIY recirculating stream table from easily accessible off-the-shelf parts. As you can see from the videos above it works quite well. They have an unexpected benefit in that stream channel profiles and sediment transport are easily viewed through the transparent sides.
Fluvial geomorphology made easy! An entire class set of six would cost less than $300!! Instructions & parts follow.
I tend to get frustrated when science supply companies charge teachers like myself obscene prices for what turns out to be simplistic and often flimsy lab equipment. When I was a new teacher in need of stream tables for my fledgling geoscience classes, I had my school pony-up $100 a pop for what I thought were going to be awesome stream tables (I mean, for $100 they must be awesome, right??) They turned out to be nothing more than long plastic troughs that were designed to have buckets poured over them while draining to the grass! Not exactly what I had envisioned. Necessity led me to modify those first tables by adding pumps, sumps and tubing. Those tables have worked quite well for the past ten years but are now showing their age (and I'm still mad that $5 worth of plastic cost our school $400, not to mention the pumps I had to buy out of pocket).
Fast-forward 10 years and geoscience classes have exploded in popularity on my campus. We now offer something like 17 sections with five different teachers. Sharing four stream tables amongst all of us wasn't going to cut-it so I decided to try my hand at making a cheap, DIY recirculating stream table from easily accessible off-the-shelf parts. As you can see from the videos above it works quite well. They have an unexpected benefit in that stream channel profiles and sediment transport are easily viewed through the transparent sides.
Fluvial geomorphology made easy! An entire class set of six would cost less than $300!! Instructions & parts follow.
UPDATE 1/8/16
The shorter 33" boxes didn't work as well as I'd hoped. I could only squeeze-in two meanders *and* the plastic had so little friction that the "groundwater" in the models would actually lubricate the sand grains and cause massive slope failures at shallow gradients. I found a 44" long Sterilite Box at Target the other day and decided to try it out using Monterey Beach Sand. It works pretty well as the new time-lapse video will show. I still have to solve the lack of friction problem, but I think that can be achieved with a piece of felt hot glued to the bottom.
The shorter 33" boxes didn't work as well as I'd hoped. I could only squeeze-in two meanders *and* the plastic had so little friction that the "groundwater" in the models would actually lubricate the sand grains and cause massive slope failures at shallow gradients. I found a 44" long Sterilite Box at Target the other day and decided to try it out using Monterey Beach Sand. It works pretty well as the new time-lapse video will show. I still have to solve the lack of friction problem, but I think that can be achieved with a piece of felt hot glued to the bottom.
UPDATE 12/1/17
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Parts
Hunt around for the best deals. The prices I list are for brand new parts. If you're like me you may already have most of the stuff lying around the garage which would then make this project REALLY cheap! I ordered the tubing and pump from Amazon Prime. I got the Sterlite box at Walmart and everything else at Orchard Supply Hardware. I would recommend making four or more tables at once so you can buy in bulk and shave-off a few more bucks.
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Putting it Together

17. The final set-up. The remaining tubing is attached to the pump. The pump is set in a holding tank of your design (bucket, tupperware, whatever holds 2+ gallons). The hose from the pump is held in the stream table using the cheap clamps. The drain tube is held in the holding tank by a cheap clamp. You may need to siphon the outlet hose to get it going. Fill the table with sand/clay and you're good to go! (I used plastic medium from EM River).