WAT-ER We Drinking?

Evidence of Work

Our driving question for this project was: How can we use Chemistry to support the chemical treatment of wastewater and various clean water initiatives? We began this process by brainstorming as many ideas as possible, and then narrowed it down to one. We decided on on basing our project on the issue that started in Flint, Michigan during the Spring o 2014. The lead pipes were corroded and caused all water transported from source to source to be contaminated. The most effective way to solve the problem was to remove all the pipes and replace them with a different material. This solution was far beyond our capability and our budget so we came up with a way more affordable and temporary solution.

Our solution was a filtration system that attaches directly to the tap in which water gets filtered effectively and efficiently, turning dirty contaminated water into clean and drinkable water.

Our Project Procedure goes as follows:

Contaminate tap water with lead, copper, and iron.

Test contamination levels.

Run contaminated water through filter.

Test the filtered water for contamination levels.

Analyze the data by finding how well the filter worked.

Create a new, improved design for a function-able filter by using chemistry concepts to purify water.

This is our slideshow to go along with the final project which shows all the tests we went through, the data that was collected before when contaminating all the water samples and the results after, and it shows our solution along with improvements we could do to the filter.

Content

Polarity- a separation of electric charge to a molecule or its chemical groups having an electric dipole moment, with a negatively charged end and a positively charged end.

Bonding- a lasting attraction between atoms, ions or molecules that enables the formation of chemical compounds.

Cohesion- the action or property of like molecules sticking together, being mutually attractive.

Adhesion- the tendency of dissimilar particles or surfaces to cling to one another.

Solution- a special type of homogeneous mixture composed of two or more substances.

Ionic bond- a type of chemical bonding that involves the electrostatic attraction between oppositely charged ions.

Covalent bond- a chemical bond that involves the sharing of electron pairs between atoms.

pH Level- the measure of the acidity or basicity of aqueous or other liquid solutions.

Concentration- the abundance of a constituent divided by the total volume of a mixture.

Molarity(M)- measure of the concentration of a chemical species, in particular of a solute in a solution.

Oxidized- the loss of electrons or increase in oxidation state of an atom, ion, or molecule in a chemical reaction.

Trihalomethanes- they find uses in industry as solvents or refrigerants and are also environmental pollutants, and many are considered carcinogenic.

Filtration- a physical separation process that separates solid matter and fluid from a mixture using a filter medium that has a complex structure through which only the fluid can pass.

Total hardness: a measurement of the mineral content in a water sample that is irreversible by boiling.

Reflection

This project was our first big project where we had to make a prototype and test it and then present in front of two classes and a judge from North Bay Science Discovery Bay. For all of our group members this was the first major project where we presented in front of judges and third parties since our freshman year of high school. During freshman year we had many project in STEM Physics where we had to create projects and present them. We all agreed that it was really nice to do a project like this again because we hadn't had the chance due to being at home during the pandemic.

Our group had really good chemistry and we all got along really well, I could tell at the beginning of the project that we would work well together. During the project we demonstrated great collaboration and project solving when running into roadblocks. We had some difficulty when testing our filter because to get the contaminated water through the filter we needed pressure. And this was difficult because we only had a certain amount of copper, iron and led to filter. To solve this we came up with a contraption where we could push the water through with a bottle and it seemed to work well. I also believe that our organization and presenting went really well. Our slideshow was very organized and we did this by trying to minimize the amount of words per slide but when describing the slide we said more and added more details.

Some things we could improve for our next project would be time management and project planning. We got all of our work done and our project completed on time but we started to stress a little in the last couple days on our project. We also ordered our filter later on in the project so we could not do as much testing and filtering as we would have wanted to. Next what we could've done better is organize a project schedule at the very beginning to get a certain amount of work done each day. And also to improve our data we could get all of our materials in as soon as possible to increase the amount of lab days to get as much statistics as possible. Overall it was a very enjoyable project and it was interesting to see other groups projects as well to see what other groups came up with and what we could learn from them.