Exchange With Reporters in Baltimore, Maryland

Living Classrooms Water Quality Experiment

Q. Tell us, what does it mean?

The President. Well, this water is from here. So they wanted to test the water to see if it could accommodate life. And you had to put this free agent in the water, and then you shake it up, and then you match it up with these colors here, to see which one it's like. So we put it in here, and the color is most like this one—7.5 to 9, and then here's the chart. It's around neutral; this way it will accommodate life. If it's too acidic, obviously it won't. But if it gets way out here, it's too basic, it won't. So anywhere in this range, right, 7 to 10 is okay. And you see the color here is like in between these two.

I learned all that from Brandon here, my science instructor—[laughter]—my marine biology instructor here. You did a great job.

Brandon Hunter. Any time.

The President. And so did you, Aaron.

The Vice President. Aaron did a great job, too.

Brandon. This was fun.

The President. Was it fun for you?

Brandon. Yep.

The President. It was fun for us, too. Thanks.

Vice President's Travel

Q. Mr. President, if you're grounding the Vice President, will you be skipping some of your trips over the next couple of weeks, too?

The Vice President. We're going to go do this event now, and then we'll——

The President. I didn't ground him. Don't get too carried away with the school metaphors here. I just asked him to stay around.