Is It Safe to Drink?
How would you obtain clean water if you were lost in the wilderness?Copyright (left) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, (right) NASA http://www.cdc.gov/features/DiabetesHeatTravel/ http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/test/speakersnotes/ITP/912/examples_spsci.html
As part of the ongoing "Lost in the Amazon" unit scenario, students conduct an investigation to purify water. They engineer a method for cleaning water, discover the most effective way to filter water and practice conducting a scientific experiment. Through this activity and its associated lesson, student teams follow the steps of the engineering design process related to water treatment, as done by practicing engineers, including constructing and testing their designs.
One of the greatest problems facing society is the availability of clean drinking water. Engineers work in teams to create and test solutions to problems, following the steps of the engineering design process. To provide communities with safe drinking water, engineers design wastewater treatment plants and distribution systems that include sediment filters and chemical treatments to protect public health.
After this activity, students should be able to:
- Ask a question about the world and formulate an orderly plan to investigate it.
- Arrange the steps of a scientific problem in a logical order.
- Design and conduct a scientific investigation.
- Use data to construct a reasonable explanation.