In 5th Grade, we are learning to make water filters. This is both informative and timely as there is a growing gap between clean water supply and demand both in the developed and developing world.  Without adequate filtration a lot of people would consume less than clean water and can get sick.

My class group, Chase, Samantha, and I did some research to look up the materials we were going to use to make the best water filter possible. Our experiment results were graded with numbers 1-5 with 5 the worst and 1 the best.

The filtration materials that we used included activated charcoal, cotton balls, gravel, and sand. As we started to test, we recorded the data by taking pictures and videos.

Before commencing this experiment, we read a book called “Saving Salila’s Turtle”. The book is about a girl name Salila who lives in India. Salilla lives near the Ganges River and notices that the water is dirty because of pollution. She finds a turtle in bad shape because of the dirty water. Salila’s mother is an environmental engineer and takes Salila and her turtle to her lab. They  decide to make a filter and keep the turtle in clean water.

At school, we talked about why we needed filters. The reason is that people and animals are getting sick from dirty water. Also, it can harm the environment. We read a book about how people had to walk a few miles each day to get water from a source. The water was not even clean. Some of the things that causes water to become dirty are soap, boats, garbage, baths, washing household items, auto garage, and many more. Many of these substances are laden with chemicals and cause water pollution. People can uses filters to clean the water and remove solid particles, microbes and bacteria. This is easy and cheap to do, and is a simple solution to purify water for people to drink. Filters are these days abundantly used in schools, sinks, doctors, at a restaurant, in houses, swimming pools, fish tanks, at a water reservoir, etc.

When we made our filter our goal was to get a score of 2. We wanted our filter to be easy to use, durable, and efficient/fast. After the first test, the filter cleaned out all of the particles but the color only changed a little. The result is below. Our score turned out to be 3, but the water had no visible particles in it.

We decided to run the filtered water into another filtration process to make the color clearer. This helped us improve the quality of water.  This experiment was easy to do and taught us a lot about water filters. Water filters can help provide clean water to millions of people especially in the developing world where water resources are scarce. I hope I can start making actual ones when I get older and teach other kids how to do it as well. I am planning to take a vacation to India in late March and am planning to go to a village to teach school kids about various types of water filters.