Water Filtration (Yina Yang)

Author(s)

Yina Yang, Alliance Gertz-Ressler High School

NGSS Engineering Standards

Define a simple design problem reflecting a need or a want that includes specified criteria for success and constraints on materials, time, or cost.

Materials needed

• prepared soil water with sand and Italian dressing relatively opaque

• cotton balls

• gauze squares

• tulle/netting

• coffee filters

• gravel (aquarium gravel works great)

• sand

• graduated cylinders

• activated carbon

• pre-cut 16.9oz-water bottle

• pH paper

Procedure

1. Provide students with a budget of $100.

2. Put a price tag to all materials that can be used to build the water filtration system

3. Allow students 30 minutes to plan, draw their blue print of their water filtration system, and budget their money.

4. Students will make purchases and build their water filtration system in 30 minutes.

Questions

• Why might rain water be acidic?

  • Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides are release into the atmosphere through dust and smoke from industrial factories and burning of fossil fuels. As these gases are in the atmosphere, they dissolve as precipitation occurs. As it rains, the rain water collects the gas making the rain water more acidic than the normal pure water pH at approximately 7.

• Why would the order of materials put into the filtration matter?

  • The order of materials matter because the solution can go through a series of reaction before reaching its final destination to check for pH level. The larger particles should be filtered out first, followed by further treatment of the chemicals in the solution. Therefore, build a filtration system that would get rid of the larger substances in the solution before treating the solution itself for efficiency of material usage.

• Why is filtering water so important to humans?

  • Not many parts of the world are fortunate enough to have filtered water like us in America. Water is a must have resource for all life. Therefore, humans, like all other living organisms cannot live without it. When water is contaminated, serious health issues can occur. All of the bacterial contamination mixed with other things such as dirt can make the water undrinkable. Additionally, drinking water at the appropriate pH level is important to the body. When the body becomes too acidic to the body, damages can be made as our body needs to maintain a specific level of pH as well. Therefore, water filtration is important to sustain a healthy living.

Photos

Movies

References

Water Filtration System - NASA Education Dept.

Water Filtration by Tech Engineering

Activated Carbon

Safe water

Survival Recovery