Daniel Edmonds., Age 12, Of Utica, N.Y., for his question:

What causes hard water?

Water, as everyone knows, is wet and runny, and it becomes hard only when it freezes to solid ice. But in certain area8, so called hard water comes running out of the faucets. As a rule, hard water supplies come from limestone hills and other beds of calcium minerals, so here is a clue to what causes it.

Nobody likes to deal with hard water in the kitchen, in the laundry or the bathroom. Dishes washed in hard water do not g1isten as they should. The laundry tends to come out looking grimy gray, and hard water is responsible for most of that grubby ring around the bathtub.

The reason for all this is dissolved chemicals in the water. This occurs because water tends to dissolve and carry away loads of minerals from the ground. And our reservoirs are filled with water which has been gathered from the streams and rivers. Some of it has run underground through rocky caverns and tunnels.

Calcium minerals are always eager to disso1ve in running water, and reservoirs that gather their water supplies from limestone and other calcium deposits are likely to be filled with so called hard water. We cannot see these chemicals in the water, and hard water usually looks as glassy clear as soft water, but there is a great difference  between hard and soft water when time comes for the washing jobs. The dissolved chemicals in hard water tangle with the soap and form a grubby scum. If you could remove the scum, the water would be soft acid free

From chemicals. But this gooey job is too difficult, and the grimy mixture of soap and chemicals sticks to the dishes, the laundry and the bathtub.

There are other ways to remove the hidden chemicals from hard water. Soda and other chemicals of this type also combine with the minerals in hard water. A sprinkle of water softener in the bathtub combines with the hard water chemicals, and the mixture sinks to the bottom. The bath water is now soft water. And soft water mixes with the soap to form mountains of the frothy white foam which works to get out the dirt.

A city gathers its water supplies over a large area. The water begins as rainfall, which is soft and free from chemicals. The rain which runs to the reservoir over granite stream beds is likely to be soft, for hard minerals do not dissolve so readily. The water which runs through soft minerals such as limestone is like7~y to gather up loads of disso1ved minerals. This is the hard water which makes washing so difficult  unless we use some method to sift out the chemicals.