So we figured out that there are many types of surfaces in Chicago, but when we look at a large scale map, we see that the city is covered in lots of impermeable surfaces.  This led us to wonder where the water goes once it goes down the storm drains.  We see all kinds of drains here in Chicago...

We drew some initial models of where we think these drains lead to.  We came up with the following ideas:

-River, lake, ocean, wastewater treatment facility, pipes, sewer, groundwater, purification plant, some other facility, stormwater pipe

This lead us to thinking about if there are some pictures or videos that can help clarify this!

And when we figured out what these pictures really mean...

We became concerned and started thinking about how this is all a problem!

So we've expanded our models are have looked specifically at groundwater.  We know how it gets down deep into the earth, and we know how the different earth materials filter it.  But what about places like where we live?  Chicago does not certainly look like the other places that have groundwater.

So we decided to test some of these surfaces by pouring water on them.  Here's a rundown of our experiments and where it took us!

Now that we've figured out how earth materials can act just like the filters and other tools we used to clean dirty water, we're taking a brief stop to collect our thoughts, and redevelop our models.

Starting from our first wondering in September, we're putting all the pieces together.  We're wrapping up lots of great learning (although we're certainly not done yet)!

Here are two classes' models that explain what happens to water as it leaves our houses...

We've really got two big ideas left to explore from what we noticed from our models:

1.  What happens when water falls on areas that aren't covered in soil or grass like in our model?  From an aerial map, Chicago looks really gray, and covered in concrete, unlike our cities we investigated with groundwater.  We don't really know what happens to our water here when it hits surfaces like that...like where does it go?!?!

2.  How does the lake, where we know we get our drinking water from, connect to the pipes that bring clean water into our house?  Is it the same as our tap water?  If not, what process does it get through to get it clean enough to drink?

​Check back...the learning continues!

So through a reading last night, we discovered that places who live near the ocean and don't have much surface freshwater or groundwater (like San Diego) actually get their drinking water from a far away source.  The water is transported through aqueducts, just like the Romans first built a long time ago!

We then circled back to groundwater, and realized that the groundwater must filter through various earth materials to reach the bottom of a well.  It made us think how the ground could actually clean the water on its way down, so we wanted to actually clean some of the dirty water we had stored from September.  This water we couldn't get clean from the tools we used then (i.e. strainer, coffee filter, strainer, colander).  But we wanted to see if sending the dirty water through the various earth materials (because the space between their pieces may be smaller than a coffee filter's holes).  would make a difference.  And it sure did!  Look at our results from above!!!  WHOAH!

More of our questions are being answered...

​What new things does this make us wonder!

So we figured out from all our experiments and watching a video on groundwater that groundwater is fairly clean as it's pumped to the surface for people to drink.  We discovered that earth materials are actually REALLY good at filtering water.  The less space there is between the pieces (like in sand) allow for only the water to filter down, and the sand traps whatever else is in the water.  It was really cool for students to see that these earth materials acted like many of the tools they used when originally trying to clean the dirty water they made.

With all that discovery came lots of questions.  If people near lakes use lake water to drink (and it gets filtered somehow we think), and if people without lakes use groundwater to drink (and we know its filtered by the ground itself), how about the people who live near all the oceans?  The oceans are HUGE and have a great deal of water in them.  Is it possible to get the salt out of the water by boiling it, capturing what evaporates, and use that as a possible drinking source?

So we set up a demonstration in class like the pictures above, and we realized something.  YES!  This process works to take the salt out of the water.  But here are some things we noticed:

1.  It takes a REALLY long time.  Mrs. Brinza only filled up the pot in like a couple inches high, and the yield we got after we boiled it for 23 minutes was like 10 drops.

​2.  That 10 drops wasn't a lot of water, either!

We're going to have a lot to wonder about this process...

While we were waiting for all this to happen, students were also wondering if the reason behind not using ocean water as a drinking water source, was because locations we researched previously had access to groundwater (now that we've figured out that this is a possible resource for communities who don't have fresh surface water).  We researched San Diego, Houston, and Orlando and all these locations have some access to fresh water on the surface and below the ground.

But we were also curious how the distance played out in all this.  Some cities are really far from their drinking water source.  But the good news is...the ocean water isn't a source, thank goodness!
​

From our cup/filter/ground material experiments, we learned a lot!  We also figured that it would be best to model why some of the materials were able to allow water to pass through them and why others weren't.

Here is some student thinking!

Many students also agreed that our experiments were necessarily totally realistic of the landscape in areas where there was supposed groundwater.  So why not build one!!!

It was just our luck too, that two students were going to Galesburg, IL during Thanksgiving, and we knew from a map of IL that Galesburg has both wells and aquifers.  These students brought back some of the soil from there so we could be as realistic as possible to see what happened with the groundwater there.  

We built a landscape adding all kinds of soil and rock, and underneath them we placed some dark colored paper to see if it got wet (we figured out that the paper turns a darker color when wet so that would give us evidence if the water went all the way through the material.  We saw lots of cool stuff...and it made us think some more (of course)!

So we noticed that the materials all let the water pass through them (with the exception of that big rock again)!  Some took longer than others, and it seems like the wetter the soil was (like the stuff from Galesburg), the easier the water was able to get "into" it.  

We also saw little pools start to develop, as well as little streams.  We also noticed that the tilt/slant/angle of the surfaces makes the water flow.  We began some models to get our thinking visible, and we'll establish consensus tomorrow!

From discussing our models, most students agreed that water gets underground because it soaks into the ground.  We figured out that it would be important to look at the maps of places that we knew had groundwater first, and when looking specifically at Rockford, Galesburg, and Champaign, IL, we saw lots of different types of ground cover.  It looked like these areas had different combinations of soil, and in our classroom we had access to sand, gravel, topsoil, and big rocks.  The big rocks could represent the streets we saw in these places.

We discussed possible investigations we could do to see if water went down through these earth materials, and we determined it would be hard to see what happened if we didn't have access to under them.  Hence, the idea of the clear cup + coffee filter secured with a rubber band was born!

Here are our investigations in action!

As the investigations were ongoing, students were recording their observations.  Check our some students' work!  There was definitely some BIG differences, and we'll be figuring out what our results tell us about how groundwater gets underground.  We'll also be modeling what this means to support our thinking!

We figured out it's in our best interest to answer our questions about groundwater, since there's a fairly decent supply of it for some communities.  Here are our initial thoughts regarding how groundwater ends up underground.  We'll be developing investigations to figure out this phenomena!

So we figured out that there's quite a bit of grounwater on the Earth, and we figured we should investigate that.  Students came up with three main ways to do so:

1.  Go dig in the ground, but that would be expensive and possibly unsafe.  Plus, we didn't really know where to look for it.

2.  Go to a city that didn't have any visible water and ask around about ground water.  But that would be hard to arrange a field trip and we'd assume that whomever we found would be able to talk about groundwater--and it's wrong of us to assume.

3.  Do some research to see if there are some groundwater maps.  This would be easy to find (hopefully) and free!  

So that's what we did.  We found the map below and zoomed in on three cities that were relatively close to Chicago, and didn't have a lot of visible water.  We were curious if they had other sources of water that could explain how they got drinking water if there wasn't any water in their communities:  Galesburg, Champaign, and Rockford.

We figured out by analyzing these maps that these cities have access to groundwater through wells and aquifers.  We don't really know much about these things...so we generated some new questions:

1.  How does groundwater even end up in the ground?
2.  How do they get groundwater out?
3.  If they are able to get it out, just how clean or dirty is it?

We'll start with the first question...check back soon!

After asking all our questions, we decided it was best to focus on the amount of freshwater on the Earth.  Just because we highlighted water on the maps, doesn't mean we really know how much that water represents, so students are using some real data and representing the fresh water vs. the salt water's quantities on Earth. If we're also worried about people's access to water, maybe they actually have enough near them and there's nothing to worry about!

​Here's our 2D thinking of this really important comparison!

And then we discussed how representing water as an area model would NOT be a good representing since water is actually 3-dimensional.  So we brought out some water and did some volume-measuring to see the difference on a scaled level.

And then we were like "WAIT!  That's really not a lot of freshwater available compared to salt water."

So we did more research to see where all the freshwater on the Earth is, since we see a lake, but some folks in the country don't see any water.  And maybe they get their water from somewhere else.  So here's what we found and modeled two-dimensionally of all the fresh water on the Earth:

That only a really, really, really small amount of freshwater is found in lakes, rivers and swamps.  The VAST majority (and almost all of it) is underground or in glaciers!!!  WHAT!?!?!?!?!  

This made us really think about the fresh water that is made available to us that we can physically see.  We know we don't live near glaciers or ice caps, but we're curious about groundwater.

• Where is groundwater?
• Is it at different depths?
• Why do some places have groundwater and others don't?
• How do they get groundwater out of the ground?
• How do they clean groundwater?