Science Fair Essays - Water Pollution, Drinking Water, Water

Science Fair Science Fair Project 3/21/00 Science 21 Background Information I tried to figure out how does the Wellesley tap water compare to the water of the surrounding towns. Before I started my tests I guessed which town would have the best quality water without any initial data. I thought that Wellesley tap water would be the cleanest water in the area because Wellesley has the resources and the money to keep its water at a high quality. The objective of this project is to determine water content in various drinking water supplies and then rate then from most favorable to least favorable. For this, I needed a way to test the water quality. I eventually came upon a pet store called Pet World had a fresh water testing kit. This kit called the Deluxe Fresh Lab test for several aspects of water quality such as pH, Ammonia, Nitrite, Hardness, iron, carbon dioxide, and chlorine. In my tests I did not use all the test that new kit was equipped with, I only choose the aspects that I felt were harmful to humans and aspects that I felt relevant to the initial water quality. The towns I selected from around the Wellesley area were Natick, Weston, Needam, and Newton. I originally tested for pH, Ammonia, water hardness, nitrite, iron, water hardness, and chlorine. However, during my discussions with my mentors and when testing I found that testing for Ammonia, iron, and chlorine was not relevant to help me find my result. My tests involve the use of a color chart, which would, give a value to the amount of variable present in the water sample. I used distilled water as a control because the testing of the distilled water should always show the same result. These are the different components I tested, and why they were important to the water quality. Only I have explained how on the color chart the component is measured. pH pH, term indicating the hydrogen ion concentration of a solution, a measure of the solution's acidity. The pH helps determines how corrosiveness the water is. A water source with a high pH is less likely to corrode the pipes in your home and in any other pipes which supplies water. An area with a lower pH level is more corrosive to your pipes. The composition of pH in tap water varies enormously from location to location depending on the source of the water and water treatment process. My freshwater test kit uses Zero as most acidic and 14 as most Basic in accordance with the color chart. Hardness (GH-KH) Water hardness is measured by the amount of calcium and magnesium salts in water. This natural property of water is demonstrated by the fact that soft tap water foams much easier when soap is added when magnesium and salts are not presented, then in salt water or water that is hard. Calcium and magnesium salts of sulfate, nitrates and chloride are very soluble and are therefore a relatively stable component of water hardness. The amounts in which these salts are presented are called the permanent hardness, which is part of the general hardness. The parts that consist of salts that have a low solubility and are therefore an unstable component of the GH. This unstable part is called the carbonate hardness or KH, Since the salts involved are carbonates of magnesium and calcium The test kit that is used uses a system of drops in coordination with a color chart. You are to count the number of drops put into the 8 cm of water until the water turns into the color on the chart. Then you are to compare the number of drops added to another chart that shows how hard the water is. Nitrites Ammonia in water naturally occurs as the result of waist from fish. When dissolved in water it can turn the water toxic. Like ammonia, Nitrites can deem water undrinkable. Nitrites are chemicals that can be dumped or seep into the water. Nitrites are found in things like fertilizers and is a chemical used to package meat. It is important to monitor Nitrites because it has shown in tests that it can cause cancer. The Nitrites on my on the color chart measured from