Water. You are 70% water and most people don’t drink enough of it. As the days become hotter, we all go searching for more water to reduce our stress, increase our energy, and maintain our body functions.
Water fountains across campus provide a fresh, clean and free source of water. They seem to be in every building in the most convenient locations. But not campus water fountains are built equally. Some provide bottle filling capacity such as those in E5, some filter the water like the ones in CPH, and some simply dispense water as in E2. A select few water fountains barely function at all.
My nano friends made me well aware of the water fountain on the second floor of the QNC. It has a beautiful spout for filling your water bottle with a great flow rate. But when you go to take a drink out of the fountain, you practically have to suck the water out. There are old fountains like this all across campus. They quench your thirst by making you never want to drink out of a water fountain again.
These low flow rate fountains get the distinction of the second worst fountains on campus. The worst fountain has to go to the boondoggle fountains of E5. Upper years may remember that E5 was built without a single water fountain. These fully featured water fountains were installed shortly after the building opened. They have all the bells and whistles, filters, bottle sensors, automatic shutoffs, bottle counters, and the list goes on. These darlings of the water supply industry are great, when they work.
The water fountain on the second floor of E5 is pretty much always out of commission. Typically this is due to the circuit breaker in the plug powering the fountain blowing. Those who spend a lot of time in E5 know that this can usually be fixed by resetting the breaker in the centre of the plug. For a water fountain as fancy as this one, it should be much more reliable.
Water fountains on campus should aspire to be the fountain in E3 near the extension to E5 on the first floor. In a non-scientific Facebook poll on my wall, 4 out of 5 people agreed that this is the best fountain on campus. The stream of this fountain is strong, the temperature is cold, and the water always tastes great. Just one sip of this water will melt all your stress melt away and get you going for the rest of the day.
So next time you find yourself getting frustrated by bad water fountains, don’t reach for bottled water. Take a trip to E3 and enjoy the best water fountain on campus (as declared by me).
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