Wonderful Water

What is necessary to life, is used every day, and is taken for granted in the USA? The answer is water. Learning that people in other countries do not always have access to clean, healthy water has made us appreciate our ability to turn on the faucet and have immediate access to it throughout our country. But how is the water cleaned and how does it get to us? That was the question we pondered in science. We learned that Baltimore's water is piped from a reservoir to two water treatment plants, where it is cleaned, filtered, and disinfected. From there it travels through more pipes to all of our buildings.

After learning about this process, we were given a challenge. A new city was being built and we were asked to design the filters for its water purification plant! Each table of girls had the opportunity to design a filter column that the water could be poured through so that the impurities would be removed from it. Considering the way the river water looked when it reached the new city, this was quite a challenge!

We were given large gravel, small gravel, sand, charcoal, and cotton to use in our filter columns. It was up to us to decide which materials to use, the amount of each, and the order in which to add them. First we drew the design that we wanted to plan.

We made prototypes and tested them to see which were the most effective at cleaning the water.

Then we tested the different prototypes to see which design removed the most impurities. With this information, we were able to design and build new columns which were extremely effective at purifying the water.

Look at the water below each column to see how different it is from the original river water. Don't you think we did a great job?