OTTW
What’s in your water?
Group 1
Block: 1A
By:
Lily, Alana, Emily, Jazin, Keyan, and Keylin
Problem
Water is a unique substance. Due to its unique properties, water is a universal solvent and is able to
dissolve many substance. These substance may include essential nutrients as well as harmful
pollutants. It is important to protect water quality because it affects our daily life. The problem
that we are investigating on this project is The water quality.
Research
All living things need water to survive. Water is known as the universal solvent because it is able to dissolve many substances.
These substances may be necessary for living things or could be harmful. Useful substances include dissolved oxygen gas
which is important to the health of all water bodies and ecosystems.
Cold water can hold more dissolved oxygen than warm water. Bacteria from sewage pollution or large amount of rotting plants
and reduce the amount of dissolved oxygen.
Some harmful substances include nitrates and phosphates. Nitrates in moderation are needed by plants and animals to build
protein.
However, high level of nitrate reduce the amount of dissolved oxygen in water bodies. Drinking water containing high nitrates
affects the ability of blood to carry oxygen.
High nitrate levels are seen in water bodies due to decomposing plants and animals and excretion from loving animals. Also,
fertilizers and agricultural runoff also contribute to high level of nitrates.
Phosphate is an essential nutrient for plant and animal growth and is also a fundamental element in metabolic reactions. High
level of phosphates can lead to overgrowth of plants, increased bacterial activity, and decreased dissolved oxygen levels.
●
The pH scales ranges from a value of 0 (very acidic) to 14 (very basic), with 7 being neutral. The pH of natural water is usually
between 6.5 and 8.2.
●
Temperature is very important to water quality. Temperature affects the amount of dissolved oxygen in the water, the rate of
photosynthesis by plants, and the sensitivity of organisms to toxic wastes and disease.
hypothesis
If I analyze tap water then the dissolved oxygen will be less.
Experiment
Independent Variable: Different Types of Water
Dependent Variable:
pH
Temperature
Dissolved Oxygen
Nitrates
Phosphates
Constants:
Amount of water used
Same tubes for testing
Tables
Water Quality
procedure
1)Got water samples
2)Put water into testing containers
3)Tested pH with chemicals.Shook for 3-4 minutes
until chemicals dissolved.
Then waited for 5 minutes for the color to develop.
4)Similarly tested for nitrates and dissolved oxygen
5) Tested temperature using thermometer.
7)Wrote down the results using the color chart
Water Quality Results/Analyses
Water
Samples
pH
Temperature
Nitrates
Phosphates
Dissolved
Oxygen
Tap Water
7.4
21.4
5ppm
2ppm
4ppm
Bottled
Water
7.2
23.4
5ppm
0.4ppm
3.7ppm
Creek Water
7.3
10.54
5ppm
.75 ppm
3.8ppm
Pond Water
7.6
10.6
5ppm
1.4pm
4.ppm
We tested our water samples, tap water, bottled water,creek water,pond water.We had made a
hypothesis and it was accurate.Based on the ranking results we listed the samples from best to
worse : Pond water, bottled water , creek water , and tap water.We decided that the samples we
tested are good for living organisms because they all stayed in the range where it was safe for
living organisms.Based on the results we would prefer to drink bottled water because we feel like
it's cleaner. We did NOT test all the parameters. There are two other parameters we could have
tested and they are turbidity and salinity. If we tested salinity, and turbidity it would have
influenced our results.