Our Environmental Engineering GOAL:  
Clean dirty water!

Criteria:
          a.  Color (As transparent as possible)
          b.  Particles (Nothing floating, please!)
          c.  Cost (Lower cost = more affordable)
          d.  Time (Quick!  We need clean water now!)

Constraints:
-Materials (Sand, gravel, paper filter, cotton balls, cheese cloth, metal screen)

With their team's plans approved, fifth graders are creating and testing their water filter designs according to the criteria set for the challenge.  With limited materials, they must begin to make challenging decisions that real engineers face on a daily basis.

Should we spend more money in order to get cleaner water?  Or should we trade off the quality of the water to improve its time?  As fifth graders decide to make changes to their designs, they must argue like real engineers do as they solve problems, too.  Check out the photos below to see the fifth graders in action!

With limited supplies and a cost constraint in mind, fifth graders must filter contaminated water to the most transparent level as possible.  During our brainstorming phase, students worked independently to imagine the designs they think would best meet the criteria.  There are no wrong answers here,  but they must be able to defend their reasoning.  Being an engineer means working in teams, which means they must plan and test their water filtration systems together.  Check out some of their "imagined" solutions below!   

Just how can we filter water so that it looks most like Formula #1?

Fifth graders will be working towards a goal to filter water according to the following criteria:

1.  Time
2.  Cost
3.  Color
4.  Particles

Be on the lookout for their designs and the success stories of each!

With three different types of water to test, fifth graders are making observations about how screen, coffee filters, and sand/gravel stand up to contaminants.

Collecting both qualitative and qualitative data, they are seeing how the clarity of the water changes as well as the length of time it takes to filter the water.  How transparent can we get the water to become?  How fast can we complete the process?  Is faster always better?  Or does the clarity of the water become compromised?
These are just some of the questions we're investigating as we'll begin to design our own water filters!

Now that fifth graders have identified sources of pollution and whether they are natural or artificial, they are beginning to use the engineering design process.  Our first step in the engineering design process is to ask questions.  Fifth graders are asking questions about which materials they could possibly use to clean one of three types of contaminated water. 

Will the material trap large debris like twigs or floating fertilizer?  Will the material absorb materials that are too small to be seen with the naked eye?  How can we tell if the material has done it

The water they'll be cleaning has either been contaminated with cornstarch, soil, or tea.  By looking at various materials and their properties, they will actually test specific materials and determine which materials will best meet the goal of cleaning water.  

Working in teams, fifth graders are learning that pollution can be found in many places as well as come from many different sources.  Pollution can be found in the air, water, and soil.  It can also be created from natural or artificial sources.  Natural sources of pollution come from nature, while artificial sources are human-made.

Fifth graders are also working on their communication skills.  Each team has designated "listeners" and "talkers." They spent time visiting other groups to learn about the sources of pollution they identified in a fictitious community.  They then swapped out with team members to switch roles.  

Now that fifth graders have finished reading their environmental engineering story, they mapped out how the main character, Salila, used the same process engineers use to meet a goal.  Salila's goal was to clean enough water for her turtle's tank.  

With a wide variety of materials, some careful planning, and definitely some perseverance, Salila was able to filter dirty water from the Ganges to become clean enough for her turtle's tank!

While becoming water cycle experts, fifth graders were posed the question:

Does pollution travel through the water cycle, too?

So using sticky-notes as a simulation for pollution, every time someone who visited a polluted station, they had to "drop off" some of the pollution they received.  Quickly seeing how fast pollution can spread, it became obvious that pollution can travel through the water cycle.  At the start of the game, Mrs. Brinza had only polluted the river and the lake.  At the end of the water cycle game, pollution had reached everywhere, including the clouds, the oceans, and the animals.  Wow!

As fifth graders learn more about the effects of water pollution both on human water consumption and on the animals that call various bodies of water their homes, it is important to know how the water moves.  Why you ask?

Fifth graders are discovering how water moves from one place to another through different processes.  For example, water in the ocean evaporates and condenses into a cloud.  Water from a river can runoff into the soil and infiltrate the groundwater.  Every place where water is stored is somehow interconnected.  But why is this important for an environmental engineer to know?  Only time will tell!

This week, they got to become droplets of water and travel through the water cycle themselves, using dice as a way to predict where they might be able to go.  No one water droplet's journey was the same!

Meet Salila, a young girl living in India.  Salia is very concerned one day when she notices a turtle living in extremely dirty water.  She notices that people do all sorts of things in the Ganges River where the turtle lives, many of which are affecting the overall quality of the water that both the turtle and she need.

With the help of an environmental engineer, they hope to develop a solution that will clean the water.  But just how will they do it?!?!

Vocabulary:  monsoon, environmental engineer, contaminants, water cycle, translucent, microbes, and purification.