Wat-er We Drinking?

Wat-er We Drinking Project:

The driving question for this project was How can we use chemistry to support the chemical treatment of wastewater and various clean water initiatives? The goal was to be able to use the principles of chemistry to support your topic about water (we chose the importance of saving/reusing pure water and greywater) and to educate others about the water they are drinking or how to solve a global H2O problem. There were many ways to go about this project, but we decided to create a board game as our main element for this water project.

We wanted to make it educational but fun at the same time so that kids can play this game at an early age and learn about the importance of saving water and what type of water they should use for different everyday tasks that they do in life. Then we added a tri-fold to go along with it so that the directions to the board game and the chemical components/definitions of pure and greywater could be easily read and accessed. Finally, we included a slideshow to put all of our ideas and information in one place. It stated the purpose of our elements and everything about the Wat-er We Drinking project that we incorporated.

Content:

• solvent: a substance that dissolves a solute, resulting in a solution. An example is water dissolving salt.

• solubility: the ability of a solute to form a solution with a solvent. Insolubility is the inability of the solute to form such a solution.

• ionic bond: a type of chemical bond where a metal gives up an electron (cation- H, Na, etc.) and a nonmetal gains an electron (anion- Cl, Br, etc.). It involves the electrostatic attraction between oppositely charged ions.

• covalent bond: a nonpolar covalent bond is when electrons are shared equally between atoms. Examples include H2 and O2. And a polar covalent bond is when there is an uneven sharing of electrons between atoms. Examples include H2O and HCl.

• ion: an atom or molecule with a net electric charge due to the loss or gain of one or more electrons.

• pH: the strength of the pH scale is determined by the concentration of hydrogen ions (H+) where a high concentration of H+ ions indicate a low pH and a low concentration of H+ ions indicate a high pH. The pH scale ranges from 1 to 14 where 1 to 6 is classified as acidic, 7 is neutral (neither a base or an acid) and 8 to 14 is classified as basic (or alkaline).

• acid: any substance that in a water solution tastes sour, changes the color of certain indicators, reacts with some metals to liberate hydrogen, reacts with bases to form salts, and promotes certain chemical reactions.

• base: any substance that in a water solution is slippery to the touch, tastes bitter, changes the color of indicators, reacts with acids to form salts, and promotes certain chemical reactions as well.

• ppm: a way of expressing very dilute concentrations of substances. It means parts per million.

• some common pollution indicators: total hardness (a measure of the amount of calcium and magnesium in water), iron, copper, chlorine, and pH.

• polarity: polarity in molecules is caused by differences in electronegativity between atoms.

• dipole: polar bonds between atoms create dipoles. Dipole refers to 1. the polarity of an individual polar bond between atoms, 2. the net polarity of an individual polar molecule, and 3. the polar molecule itself.

• electronegativity: describes the ability of an atom to attract bonding electrons towards itself.

• hydrogen bonding: an interaction involving a hydrogen atom located between a pair of other atoms that have a high attraction for electrons. Hydrogen bonds exist between two water molecules.

• cohesion: when molecules stick to each other. An example is a water droplet that is composed of water molecules that like to stick together.

• adhesion: when molecules stick to other surfaces. An example is water droplets stuck to the ends of pine needles.

• capillary action: the movement of a liquid along the surface of a solid. It is caused by the attraction of the molecules of a liquid to the molecules of a solid.

• point specific pollution: contamination that comes from a specific location. An example is a broken pipe that leaks into a water source.

• nonpoint water pollution: pollution that does not come from a specific location. An example is water running over a polluted landscape.

Reflection:

During this Wat-er We Drinking project, my group was Nathaniel, Parker, and Alex. We got along well and had a lot of fun working together the past few weeks. We weren't the best at managing our time wisely, but most of us were really on top of our game and contributed a ton to the finished result.

Throughout this project, I excelled in the character and collaboration categories of the 6 C's of the graduate profile. My character really stood out during this assignment by sticking up for my team members, understanding what they were dealing with, and being patient with the time it took for things to get done. One example was when a member of my group forgot to do their part of the project, so instead of getting upset, we worked on it together to get it done. My empathy and respect for them really showed that day. Another category that I did well in was collaboration. I contributed a lot of time and effort to make our project stand out and be complete. I had fun contributing, but it was a ton of work and stress that was put on my plate. I made sure everyone was included and collaborating with one another as well. We even went over our ideas and asked questions to make sure we all knew what we were doing and what our plan was every day.

Two categories I could definitely improve upon, however, was communication and conscientious learning. My group's communication could have been better if we had a group chat and reminded each other what should be done that night or the next day in class. There was usually someone absent every work day, so we should have let them know what they missed that day or what they can do to help since they didn't get to work on it with us that day. Another area that I could've improved on was my conscientious learning skills. My group and I didn't manage our time very well, which ended up being a problem for us. We worked on our project when we got the chance in class, but we waited until the last few days before we started doing things at home. We sort of rushed everything at the end so it definitely wasn't our best work. But, we were very lucky to not have to present the first day, which gave us an extra day to finalize our project and get organized. It ended up working out perfectly and our presentation went very well!