Overview The purpose of the Wat-er We Drinking? project was to design a prototype of some sort that would improve the current state of drinking or wastewater. We were also tasked with presenting our project idea/prototype to some experts from the Novato Rotary Club. My group and I wanted to create a water filter that filtered water with objects you find around your yard, such as sand or gravel. We would market this to anyone who needed an easy way of acquiring clean water, whether it be backpackers or people living in a third world country. The ingredients used in our prototype filter are gravel, sand, and activated charcoal. Each one serves a different purpose in cleaning the water, to make it the perfect filtration device. If you would like to see what our model looks like, it will be in the slideshow below.
Content Solute - A substance that becomes dissolved in the solution. Solvent - A substance that dissolves a solute. Solubility - The ability for a solute to dissolve in a solvent. Solution - The homogeneous mixture of two or more substances in a single phase, Molecular Compounds - Compounds formed by two atoms sharing elections Ionic Compounds - Compounds formed by a metal that gives up electrons to have a positive charge. pH Scale - A scale used to measure how basic or acidic a water based substance. It is based on the concentration of hydrogen ions (H-1). The higher the concentration, the more acidic a liquid is. Total dissolved solids (tds) - The concentration of any minerals, salts, metals, cations, or anions in water.
Reflection Starting this project was very difficult for us. We spend 3 days just thinking of ideas and throwing them out because they did not seem realistic or doable. Looking back at it, we could have used any of those ideas since not every group had a physical prototype to show, so we could have gotten away with it. One thing I did well on was keeping my work ethic. I worked on every task without losing much focus, which ultimately helped my group finish on time. For example, when I was tasked with researching the chemistry behind our filter, I got it done in one class period so we could easily move on the next period. Another thing I did well on was leadership. I felt like I had to step up more than usual during this project. When we were struggling to find ideas, I helped calm the group so we could be more productive in our brainstorming. Although I improved on many aspects of my leadership and work ethic skills, there were still some things I could improve on next time. The first would be time management. We tried too hard to come up with some groundbreaking idea in the first three days, which were three days we could have been starting to make our prototype. Another thing I didn't do so well on was decision making. This kind of goes hand in hand with the lack of time management, as it was caused by our inability to think of a good idea quickly.