Today in science we worked on water filters. (If you don’t know what a water filter is it is something that can remove contaminants and bad microbes from dirty water.) We have been thinking and learning about water filters for quite awhile now but today we got to make our own. This was very interesting to see the very many different ideas that every group had. This subject about water filters fit right in because we recently read a long walk to the water by Linda Sue Park. This book was about Sudan in 1885 and 2008 and the struggle of a lost boy named Salva who’s town had been under attack and he was forced to flee. He was without family for very long and everyday was a struggle to survive between the food ,water and fighting. The 2008 part was a partially made up story but with a true baseline. This was about a girl who had to walk very far to fetch only the slightest bit of dirty water. Which later on her town received help from some men to make a water filter. It turned out to be grown up Salva who decided to go back to towns in sudan and help make a water filter for the people so they could have good clean water.This gave us inspiration to create our own filters.
In class we got split in to groups, my group was Audrey and Leo. First after we got our groups we read saving Salila’s turtle. We would stop at points in the book to talk to each other about what types of pollution and where it comes from, then solutions. This was just the beginning. We kept on doing small little projects like this but during this we realized lucky we are to be available to clean water. Then we got a mysterious liquid that we had to guess,which we would soon have to filter.There was bottle A,B,C. We then had 3 filter items we could filter it by. One was a screen, we didn’t think this would work very well because we the holes were to big so all the contaminants would go through and it wouldn’t help. The second filter was paper coffee filters. We thought this filter would work more than the other ones because it had smaller holes and there were many stacked so it would be stronger. The last filter was the sand and gravel one, we thought this one would work okay but not the best. We thought this because the sand particles were very small and we thought they could easily slip through the gravel. We soon got bottle A and then started testing. First the screen we were right it worked the least. It didn’t catch very many or any. Then we tested the paper filter it worked better but still there were some microbes and contaminants in the water. The last one we tested was the sand and gravel one. We had to pour the gravel in first then the sand. This one worked the best. It got most if not all the contaminants out. We were very happy with this one.
The next project we were going to do was to make our own filters. My group and I were really excited and immediately started discussing our ideas. We made a list with our whole class of priorities of this filter and then with our group had to choose 4. My group choose 4 but we really thought about safety first. We at first were going to make a cone out of popsicle sticks but realized the hot glue was filled with chemicals and the wood was not safe either. We then started brainstorming more and more and decided to create the design. We decided to put sand and gravel first then a coffee liner then mesh with gravel. This filter worked pretty well but there were still a whole lot of contaminants in the water. Then we kept on filtering more water with the same filter. Then we made a different design. This was gravel then sand then cotton balls then coffee liners then more cotton balls. Then we did a double filter and we kept on trying to make it lighter and lighter in color. ( there were different bottles 1-5 1 clear and 5 completely filthy and polluted) We were so excited because we got it down to a 1.5.We worked so hard and it paid off,we created a good working filter.
These are the bottles 1-5. As you can see 5 is the worst and 1 is the best.