At the beginning of this project we were introduced to the concept of water being used in chemistry. We had multiple scientists who work a lot with water and they gave us a basic understanding of water filtration and basic water in chemistry. After that our teacher, Mrs. Vogl basically told us that we had to create something that involves water and relates back to chemistry. Most groups chose to create a water filtration system so thats what we did. With many days of research we finally came up with a prototype that I will show below.
Content
We learned many new key terms throughout the project but the terms below are the main ones.
PH- In chemistry, pH is a scale used to specify how acidic or basic a water-based solution is. Acidic solutions have a lower pH, while basic solutions have a higher pH.
PH Scale- A pH value is a number from 1 to 14, with 7 as the middle (neutral) point. Values below 7 indicate acidity which increases as the number decreases, 1 being the most acidic.
Filtration-Filtration is a method for separating an insoluble solid from a liquid. When a mixture of charcoal and water is filtered: the charcoal should stay behind in the filter paper (it becomes the residue ) and the water passes through the filter paper (it becomes the filtrate).
Activated Charcoal- Carbon filtering is a method of filtering that uses a bed of activated carbon to remove contaminants and impurities, using chemical adsorption. It has the ability to improve water by removing disagreeable tastes and odors, including chlorine.
Adsorption- Activated carbon works via a process called adsorption, whereby pollutant molecules in the fluid to be treated are trapped inside the pore structure of the carbon substrate. Carbon filtering is commonly used for water purification, air filtering, and industrial gas processing.
Ultra-Violet Filtration- In a UV water filter system, UV (Ultraviolet) rays are used to kill the harmful bacteria from the water. Hence the water is completely disinfected from pathogens.
Conclusion
In my opinion this project went very well. Since we got to choose our groups essentially, I had a really good time. Since we are all friends, we had each others phone numbers so COMMUNICATION was very easy amongst us. We were able to talk outside of school and work on our presentation. We were able to finish on-time and everything went perfectly. Another thing that went well was our ability to CRITICALLY THINK when needed to. I remember our filter was not working at the beginning and our group quickly sat down and we began thinking "how can we make it better." Because we were able to think critically even when we were all frustrated, we were able to advance our project forward.
To every positive aspect there is always a negative side. Now, this was very fun and went pretty smoothly but there is ALWAYS room for improvement. This isn't really our fault however, but this project happened to fall right when Caasp testing was occurring. Which meant our group was split up for a week. It was just me for the first week so for a while we didn't have any COLLABORATION because I was the only one there. We should have collaborated after school, but this was still a setback and a negative thing. Another thing that we can work on for next time is our CREATIVITY. We saw a majority of the groups start to make water filters so we decided to hop on the bandwagon as well. For future projects we need to be way more creative and think of something that not everyone is going to do. People would have also be way more engaged during our presentation if it was creative. Instead the class wasn't so engaged because they had seen many water filters already. This was a great project and I hope to do something similar in the future!