(Krista) Welcome to the Mississippi River.

What are some things that end up polluting our watershed?

(Hope) Here's another can.

(Hope) We are making an art project.

So it inspires other people to help the environment.

(Krista) It's a team effort.

(all) River Rescuers!

(cheerful music) - Major funding for "Sci Girls" is provided by the National Science Foundation.

Supporting education and research across all fields of science and engineering.

The National Science Foundation, where discoveries begin.

Additional funding is provided by the PPG Foundation which aims to bring color and brightness to communities around the world.

(girls) ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S (Izzie) We need you!

(girls) ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S ♪ (Izzie) Come on!

(girls) ♪ When I need help and I've got a question ♪ ♪ There's a place I go for inspiration ♪ ♪ Got to get to the web, check the girls' investigation ♪ ♪ What girls?

♪ SciGirls!

♪ Whoo!

(girls) ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S (Izzie) I need you!

(girls) ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S Come on!

♪ You've got to log on, post ♪ Upload, pitch in Yeah!

♪ Want to get inside a world that's fascinating?

♪ ♪ The time is right 'cause SciGirls are waiting ♪ (girls) ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S (Izzie) We need you!

(girls) ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S ♪ (Izzie) SciGirls!

Hey, Izz.

What you doing?

Whoa!

[clattering] [chuckles] Jake, you found Max, my monkey math robot!

Oh, I've had him since I was two.

Oh!

(both) Ooh, ooh.

Eeh, eeh.

I see number 3!

You've got, like, mountains of stuff in here.

[chuckles] I know.

I wanted to build a skyscraper with my popsicle-stick collection, but I couldn't find it, so... [whispering] I went searching in there.

[eerie note] [mysterious music] ♪ Found them!

You know, maybe the SciGirls can help me with this mess.

Here, you can hold Max.

[upbeat music] ♪ Oh, that's cool.

Hmm.

Nice, but, eh, maybe another time.

[gasps] Ooh, this could work!

♪ (Hope) Let's go see the dock down there.

When I'm outside in nature, I feel very calm and quiet.

(Amelia) This is cool.

(Hope) Yeah.

I really like the birds and just being in, like, the fresh air.

It's refreshing.

(Amelia) There are three little fish in there.

(Hope) Oh, there's another one.

We're at Fort Snelling State Park.

It feels peaceful, and it also feels very fun to be with my friends.

♪ My name is Amelia.

My friends describe me as shy but also energetic.

Whee!

My name is Dani.

A few things about me is that I am blind.

Some way they would describe me is probably outgoing and fearless.

Hey, Hopey, high five.

Dani, I'm trying to-- I can't--Aah!

My name is Hope.

One of the things I love to do is play the trumpet, and, also, I love science.

What are you guys drawing?

I'm drawing this angle right by me.

My name is Jenny.

I was born in Vietnam.

I really like to dance, and I like art.

(Dani) I know Hope 'cause she was in a lot of my classes last year.

Amelia is my sister.

And I met Jenny this year, and we became friends.

(Hope) We are a very hardworking team.

We love to just be silly... [laughter] And then we're also very serious.

Oh, look, there's an exhibit.

Oh, yeah.

At Fort Snelling, they have this pollinators' exhibit.

And what I really enjoyed about it was how it was accessible to many different people.

(Hope) Look, there's audio description.

- Should we play it?

(Jenny) Yeah, we should.

(electronic voice) Welcome to our 5-minute audio description of this interpretive panel exhibit.

(Amelia) We live in Minnesota, close to where the Mississippi River starts.

(Hope) It starts in Lake Itasca.

(Jenny) And it goes down to the Gulf of Mexico.

I thought it was cool that it starts on, like, such a small lake and just gets bigger and stronger.

♪ Today we are going on a riverboat... (ranger) Welcome aboard.

(all) Thank you.

(Hope) And learning about history of the Mississippi River.

♪ Welcome to the Mississippi River.

My name is Krista.

Have you ever been on a boat this big before?

-(all) No.

-[laughs] (Jenny) First, we met Krista, a park ranger at Fort Snelling State Park.

(Krista) We are on the mighty Mississippi River.

We are going to be exploring one of Minnesota's first highways.

We think about bringing people here.

I myself am an immigrant to Minnesota.

And there are so many other people that have come here over time, but the Dakota people have called this place home for thousands of years.

Krista explained a lot about the history of the river, including how it's really huge for the Dakota.

The Dakota name for this river is Hahawakpa, and it means "river of the falls."

♪ ♪ She also talked about how we should try and conserve it so that we can realize who came before us and who will come after us as well.

It was used for transportation and to pass supplies.

They might send big old white pine trees down the river, and then they'd get collected here in St. Paul and Minneapolis.

Today we use the river for, like, water sources and to go on boat rides still, 'cause that's fun.

(Krista) Because we're in the Mississippi River watershed, a lot of our drinking water is impacted by the Mississippi River.

(Jenny) A watershed is a area that water kind of collects to.

(Hope) The Mississippi River watershed is the largest in the U.S. and the fourth largest in the world.

(Krista) So, when we're looking out here at the Mississippi River, there are so many plants, so many animals, so much life.

Do you know what that word is for all of that life and all the different types of life that are in a space?

- Is it biodiversity?

- Biodiversity.

You got it.

(Amelia) Krista talked about how it's one of the most biodiverse rivers.

Oh, look at that big eagle's nest up there.

(Hope) Yeah.

(Krista) That's huge!

(Jenny) Oh, there's one!

Oh, wow.

(Hope) Oh, there goes one.

(Amelia) Oh, it just lost a feather.

We're coming up on Fort Snelling State Park.

(Dani) Do you guys clean the water here?

No, we don't clean the water.

But we do have a lot of rules about picking up trash.

(Jenny) She told us a lot about how it impacts Minnesota and down to the Gulf of Mexico.

I really would like you to meet Laura, who will be able to go a little bit deeper into what's in the water and some more of the ways that we can take care of it.

- Would you like to meet her?

(all) Yeah.

♪ ♪ - Hello.

(all) Hi.

Welcome.

(Amelia) We met Laura.

She works with Friends of the Mississippi.

Here you've got a really great model of 3-D watershed.

Let's do a little experiment.

Dani, do you want to be the water?

Sure.

[laughs] You can be the rain.

Does someone want to make the rain sound for us?

- I will.

- Amazing.

What are some things that you think end up polluting our watershed?

Plastic.

(Jenny) Salt.

(Laura) Yeah.

- Oil.

(Laura) Oil, yeah.

Maybe some people have spilled some oil from their cars.

Too much salt.

Oh.

What are some other pollutants that we've got that might end up there?

- Yard waste.

(Laura) Yard waste.

(Amelia) Even things like leaves and grass and soil can be pollutants.

(all) Plastic.

(Laura) So we know plastic lasts for a really, really long time.

And what are some of the dangers of, you know, plastic that starts off here in the Twin Cities and runs all the way down?

What starts, do you think, happening to it over time?

It starts, like, breaking up into micro-plastic.

Fishes and marine animals would eat it, and sometimes they would starve because the plastic is filling their stomach, but it's not really food.

(Laura) We've got a bunch of trash in our waterways.

Let's see what happens when it rains again.

[bottle spritzing] [soft music] ♪ Oh, no.

What's happening around the watershed?

It's all sliding.

It's all going down.

(Amelia) It's clogging.

(Hope) One thing that I learned and I thought was really cruel and sad was even, like, a really small amount of material can, like, really make a big impact.

It seems like what we're doing to the land actually is impacting the water.

So, even if we don't live near a waterway, our storm drains drain directly to the river.

(Dani) Yeah.

A big part of my job is awareness and education.

Some of the projects we've done at Friends of the Mississippi River-- we've worked with a lot of schools and community members to use a debris tracker.

A debris tracker is a citizen-science app that you can track and put in data about debris.

Citizen science is when the public is doing science and helping with research.

So how do we use the tracker?

Well, I could take you out, and we can go out into the community and try it out.

I'm pretty excited to see, like, what it is and how it works.

I'm Amelia.

Here are some of my favorite things to do.

Let's make a smoothie together.

I take a cup of fruit and put it in the blender.

Now we blend.

[blender whirring] Once you're all done, don't forget to enjoy it.

Yum.

This is my dog, Rev.

This is my cat, Aurora.

This is my other dog, Apollo.

He's a puppy, so he's very energetic.

I play the oboe.

[playing scale] ♪ See you soon.

[upbeat music] ♪ - Hi, Laura.

- Oh, hi.

(all) Hi.

- It's nice to see you again!

We are at Hidden Falls.

(Dani) We are meeting Laura, and we are going to be doing a trash pickup.

(Laura) It's estimated that about 8 million metric tons of plastic is ending up in our oceans.

The big questions that the scientists are really digging into is, where is the pollution coming from?

And what can we do about it?

Well, we can help spread awareness and pick up trash.

(Laura) Yeah.

We can also do what scientists really like, is look at some data.

Identifying different specific types of trash could also help us figure out, where is it coming from?

And it's going to just really help us solve this problem that is not only a local problem but really a global issue.

Plastic is a problem everywhere.

So, before we start using this, I wanted to also get us equipped with some other tools that we need for our trash cleanup.

We want to be safe, and so we've got gloves.

We're not going to pick up anything that's needles or any glass that's sharp.

Or if it's something that's too large to fit into the containers that we have, we could identify it and flag it for the park board.

And then at the end, you should also, like, wash off your hands and anything that was, like, near trash again for safety.

♪ ♪ (Amelia) Gum wrapper.

(Jenny) Gum wrapper.

(Dani) Ooh.

(Hope) A mask.

I got Styrofoam.

An Oreo wrapper, I think.

I wonder who left that there.

Food wrapper.

Yeah, two of them.

(Amelia) Glass fragment.

(Jenny) That's a lot of trash.

(Amelia) Oh, it looks like masking tape.

Masking tape.

For the trash pickup, we split into teams.

And on each team, there was somebody who kept the tallies and somebody who picked up the trash.

Cigarette butt.

Cigarettes.

So you find a piece of trash, and you go through the different categories on the app to try to find what you have.

Two bottle caps.

Metal.

(Amelia) And we collected for 30 minutes.

Oh, it's a pocketknife.

(Hope) A pocketknife.

For my part, I did the tallying.

And I just used my phone, and I used this Braille keyboard that I type with eight of my fingers, 'cause I have to hold it weird.

(Hope) I see two plastic bottles.

(Dani) Two plastic water bottles.

Aluminum.

There's a water bottle.

(Hope) We also have a ribbon that I'm putting in.

More metal coming your way.

It's tinfoil, I believe.

There were trash cans at the park.

They were everywhere.

But for some reason, there was still a lot of trash on the ground.

Oh, another cup.

(Hope) Okay, here's another can.

(Dani) We collected many kinds of debris, but at the top was plastic.

(Laura) So, of 145 items, the majority is plastic.

86 items are plastic.

For plastic, we picked up 59%.

You can look at other data as well that other people have collected.

Maybe get some ideas about a bigger project or what your next steps might be.

- Sound good, everybody?

(Hope) Thank you.

(Laura) Thank you for all the work that you did.

It felt pretty cool because we got to do citizen science and contribute to that data.

Hi, I'm Jenny.

Welcome to my house.

I really like to draw.

This is an art project that I made for science last year.

I do tend to draw a lot more cartoon, like, anime-ish style.

Welcome to Jenny's baking show!

I mostly make cookies, but sometimes I do change it up.

I'm making a vanilla cake for my sister.

So right now I'm holding my dog.

His name is Luca.

He's a teddy bear.

And he is one-year-old.

Thank you.

See you next time.

Bye.

[upbeat music] ♪ ♪ Today we are at Hidden Falls again, and we are brainstorming what to do for our art project to bring awareness.

(Hope) We are making an art project so it inspires other people to help the environment.

What kind of project should we make?

Maybe a collage.

Yeah!

Oh, my gosh, that would be smart.

Yeah, we should draw pictures or take pictures about what we see in the water and the river.

Yeah.

We should add audio description for it, so it would be accessible.

Yeah, like at Fort Snelling.

And we could also add, like, tactiles 'cause, like, tactiles are cool.

(Amelia) Yeah.

The more accessible our project is, the more people are going to be able to get involved.

If we add Braille, then we get a whole nother group of people to join the movement.

Sounds like we got a plan.

Let's go try it out.

Okay.

[upbeat percussive music] ♪ ♪ The way that we divided up the project was that Jenny was doing the drawing.

I am going to draw the scenery of what I see, and I hope that people could maybe feel the same way about cleaning up the area.

(Dani) And Amelia was taking the pictures.

I was helping Hope with, like, audio and the audio description.

The rocks even make a sound.

(Hope) Yeah.

We are getting audio of sounds of nature, and we're also doing audio description for the project.

What do you hear?

- I heard a bird.

- Oh.

- Over there.

- I got a recording of it.

(Jenny) Our next step is to look at the website to see what data has been collected and see places that haven't been.

Hi.

My name is Dani.

I'm making a dessert-- chocolate-covered strawberries.

First, I cut off the leaves, and then I'm dipping them in chocolate.

Then we're going to freeze them.

I like playing hockey.

We don't use a regular-size puck.

And it's made out of metal and has ball bearings in it that make it make sound.

[ball bearings rattling] I like walking the dogs 'cause my dogs love me.

I like playing my instrument because I like music.

[plays note] Bye!

See you later!

[upbeat music] ♪ Today we are at Hope's house.

And we are going to be looking at the website.

(Hope) And see what other people have collected around the Twin Cities area.

(Amelia) Yeah, maybe we can find somewhere that doesn't have any data near us.

(Dani) It would be good to get more people to, like, experience it so that they can help spread the word.

(Amelia) Maybe here, over by where Krista works.

I also was using a tactile map that has the river and has, like, the Twin Cities around it, and I could look at that.

(Hope) Jenny is sick today, which is pretty sad, but we're going to catch her up on everything.

So I think Fort Snelling Park, just in general, would be a really good area because it's, like, a really important area for the Mississippi and just Minnesota, in general.

And it's also very historical.

- Yeah.

- So we want to keep it clean.

We decided to do our cleanup at Fort Snelling State Park, because we noticed, especially on Pike Island, that there wasn't a lot of data.

It's a really big park.

There's a boat launch and a picnic area, and we're going to use that area to help clean up.

- Are you guys excited?

- Yeah.

- I'm very excited.

- I am too.

(all) Three, two, one.

Yeah!

That was crispy.

Hi, I'm Hope.

Welcome to my house.

This is my music room and then my flute and my trumpet.

[plays notes] These are my chickens.

This is the she-shed that me and my dad are building.

This is my bed.

I sketched it out, and me and my dad built it.

And I have my periodic table of elements poster because I love the periodic table.

Another thing I love to do is tennis.

♪ ♪ See you next time!

♪ ♪ [wood creaking] ♪ ♪ We're at my house finishing our art project.

(Amelia) Here, what do we want as our title?

(all) The River Rescuers.

(Amelia) And then we have each of our little boxes.

(Hope) We want people to get involved because one little impact on the Mississippi can go all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico.

I think, for the raindrops, like, we should put a quote in it.

We could do the "one drop can lead to a bigger action."

And then we want the audio description.

(Dani) Including people with, like, different experiences just helps with the problem solving, 'cause then you have more people putting in their ideas and their potential solutions.

♪ ♪ (Hope) Should we start recording?

(Dani) Yeah, let's go with what we have.

Okay.

This is audio description of our art project, titled River Rescuers.

This art project is by Hope, Amelia, Dani, and Jenny.

Our art project is coming along really well.

We are almost done.

We just need, like, an hour or so.

(Amelia) I'm really excited for our upcoming cleanup event to help get more people informed and to be able to train more people.

Check it out.

We've got dinosaur toys!

[roars] And space books that are out of this world!

[imitates engine whirring] What's that, Izz?

Oh, I created an app that helps me keep track of all my things.

I input where I keep everything in my room and how often I use stuff.

Cool.

Yeah.

If I haven't used something in a while, it flashes like this.

[beeping] And then I know it's time to give it away.

(both) Eeh, eeh, ooh-ooh.

I see number 2!

Oh, here you go.

This monkey's for you.

[gasps] Izz, can I keep it?

I mean, this superhero lunchbox is totally awesome.

[chuckles] Sure, Jake.

I'm saving the planet one reusable lunchbox at a time!

Inputting that and... Whoa.

According to your app, we've given away everything.

Yeah, now I'll finally have room to build my popsicle-stick skyscraper.

[gasps] Ooh, and I can fit a build-your-own volcano set in there, too, a slime laboratory-- Whoa, that's a lot of stuff.

Oh, yeah, you're right.

I don't want to end up here again.

Come on, I got an idea.

[upbeat music] ♪ ♪ (Jenny) Hey, guys.

(Amelia) Oh, there's Jenny.

(Hope) Jenny!

It felt really good to have Jenny here today so our whole group could be here.

It's like the missing puzzle piece back in.

We're at Fort Snelling State Park, and we are doing a trash cleanup around the river and the picnic area.

The people who are coming to our event-- both of our mentors are coming.

And we're going to have a ton of our friends there, too.

So this is the safety table.

So we're going to do these things like stations.

And at every station, we give them the materials that they need.

(Dani) We need gloves because you don't ever want to come in contact with the trash.

Do you guys have a phone to use?

Or do you guys want a clipboard?

(child) Clipboard.

(Hope) So, for this, you're going to just do a tally of the different things that you find.

It feels really nice to share what we've learned so other people can learn it and they can be inspired.

(Amelia) Have fun.

♪ (Laura) We found a metal stake, so I think that would go in here.

(Jenny) So first we want to clean up in the picnic area, which we took half an hour on.

I found another one!

Another metal stake!

♪ (Krista) Oh, it's a team effort.

(Amelia) Try to find as much trash as you can in the next five minutes!

(Jenny) We went off and collected around the picnic areas for 30 minutes and then around the boat launch for 30 minutes.

[indistinct chatter] Ooh, look at all of that.

(Amelia) We are here at the boat launch.

Go ahead and start cleaning up in your two groups.

Make sure you stay with your group.

(Laura) Oh, beverage bottle.

One beverage bottle.

(both) What is that?

(kids) Rubber ball.

(Hope) It was definitely a success.

It doesn't matter your ability or, like, your strengths and weaknesses.

It just really matters if you're willing to commit.

(child) Wrapper, wrapper, wrapper--who has the bucket?

(Amelia) It seemed like a lot of our volunteers really enjoyed it, and it really impacted them.

Then we came back, and we talked about what kind of trash we picked up.

Our first cleanup had 70 items.

The data results were very interesting.

We had 70 items in the picnic area.

And then on the boat-launch area, we had 145 items.

We found that there was a lot more plastic around the boat launch than there was around the picnic area.

And there was a lot more trash around the boat launch in general.

(Laura) Why do you think it was different?

I feel like areas near water appeal to, like, a lot of people.

So a lot of people are gonna come there.

And sometimes the river gets plastic in it, and the water flows in and out, which makes it leave the plastic on the shores.

And, like, up here, it's mostly just humans moving it around.

Then we showed our projects.

(Amelia) Our mom-- when she was little, she didn't see a lot of bald eagles 'cause they were endangered.

But now every time you come out to the river, you usually see one or two.

That tells us that even if a problem seems hopeless, you can still turn it around.

The volunteers and our mentors seemed to really like our art project, especially since it had Braille and audio description on it.

(Dani) My art is on the right.

You can touch it.

It is raindrops that have Braille on it as well.

I feel like the younger it's put into your heart, the better and, like, more you'll really feel for the river and try to help it out.

Thank you so much for coming.

I hope that you guys can make your own cleanups and organize your own cleanups.

You could help clean up the river or just cleaning outside your home.

Thank you for helping out.

(Hope) My favorite part of the experience was our cleanups, 'cause we got to help with the environment and learn about our environment at the same time.

(Amelia) I hope that our volunteers and everyone who sees our art project learns to take care of our river.

(Jenny) I feel like we did really good with the trash cleanup.

I feel like that would be great because it affects everyone.

(all) One, two, three... River Rescuers!

And now anytime I want something new, I have to get rid of at least two things from my room.

[beeping] Okay, let's make a trade.

Okay.

I'll give you my lava lamp and Ferris wheel kit for your race-car-building set?

Hmm.

Throw in the chicken, and we've got ourselves a deal.

Bawk, bawk!

[giggles] Deal.

(Reagan) Congaree National Park is very beautiful.

(Jayden) And it has a very unique firefly, because they can blink their lights at the same time.

In elementary school, that's, like, the last time I saw a firefly.

(Reagan) Where they at now?

I'm excited to see a firefly.

- Ooh.

(Jayden) That is so cool.

[laughter, indistinct chatter] (Ada) We're going to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

(Isabelle) The salamander capital of the world.

(Kaylee) We went into the woods to find salamanders... - Oh, there's one.

(Kaylee) To collect some data.

(Ada) We learned so much.

- Yeah.

(cheerful music) - Major funding for "Sci Girls" is provided by the National Science Foundation.

Supporting education and research across all fields of science and engineering.

The National Science Foundation, where discoveries begin.

Additional funding is provided by the PPG Foundation which aims to bring color and brightness to communities around the world.

[upbeat music] ♪ (person) There's more fun on the "SciGirls" website.

You can watch videos, play games, and look for creatures in the great outdoors.

See you soon at pbskids.org.

♪ (girls) S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S!