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!
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!