Comparing Local Tap Water to Surrounding Towns
I tried to figure out how does the Wellesley tap water compare to the water of the surrounding towns.
Before I started my test's I guessed which town would have the best quality water without any initial data. I thought that Wellesley tap water would be the cleanest water in the area because Wellesley has the resources and the money to keep its water at a high quality.
The objective of this project is to determine water content in various drinking water supplies and then rate then from most favorable to least favorable. For this, I needed a way to test the water quality. I eventually came upon a pet store called Pet World had a fresh water testing kit. This kit called the Deluxe Fresh Lab test for several aspects of water quality such as pH, Ammonia, Nitrite, Hardness, iron, carbon dioxide, and chlorine. In my tests I did not use all the test that new kit was equipped with, I only choose the aspects that I felt were harmful to humans and aspects that I felt relevant to the initial water quality.
The towns I selected from around the Wellesley area were Natick, Weston, Needam, and Newton. I originally tested for pH, Ammonia, water hardness, nitrite, iron, water hardness, and chlorine. However, during my discussions with my mentor's and when testing I found that testing for Ammonia, iron, and chlorine was not relevant to help me find my result. My tests involve the use of a color chart, which would, give a value to the amount of variable present in the water sample. I used distilled water as a control because the testing of the distilled water should always show the same result.
These are the different components I tested, and why they were important to the water quality. Only I have explained how on the color chart the component is measured.
pH
pH, term indicating the hydrogen ion concentration of a solution, a measure of the solution's acidity. The pH helps determines how corrosiveness the water is. A water source with a high pH is less likely to corrode the pipes in your home and in any other pipes which supplies water. An area with a lower pH level is more corrosive to your pipes. The composition of pH in tap water varies enormously from location to location depending on the source of the water and water treatment process.
This is an experimental lab that tested if drinking water passes the United States maximum phosphate standard. The results of this lab can help the American who drink the water know if there are too much phosphate in the water. Each group made a Potassium phosphate dilution from a stock solution. The concentration of the solution that needed to made affected the amount of Potassium phosphate that was diluted. To create a calibration curve, each group used the different concentrated Potassium phosphate solutions in their test. The lab utilized a spectrophotometer to figure out the absorbance of the five different Potassium phosphate solution and the absorbance of an unknown concentration solution. The absorbance of the unknown solution was used
Based on our observations during the separation techniques and some speculation, we were able to identify eight components of our mixture: graphite from the filtration residue, Epsom salt from crystallization, water and acetic acid through distillation, red and orange dye, iron metal, marble chips, and sand.
B. LeCornu & T. Diercks. 2011) The experiment was undertaken with two acidic pHs (3 and 5), one neutral (7) and two basic pHs (9 and 11). Independent Variables- pH values (acidic, neutral and alkaline). Dependent Variables-
pH measures how acidic or basic something is. pH is the measure of the concentratio...
In the eutrophication test, we tested the phosphate, nitrate, and dissolved oxygen in the Conodoguinet Creek. We had a total of 9 tests for each of these items. Everyone who conducted these tests that day got the same results. The average for phosphate is 0.1, which is very good for the creek. The lower the phosphate, the better and less polluted the water is. 0.9 was the average for nitrate in the water. Nitrate is just like phosphate, the lower the nitrate the better the water quality is. The average for the dissolved oxygen is 9.8, which isn’t the best it can be, but it isn’t bad either. The average for the dissolved oxygen was lower because the weather was warm over the past few months, so that made the dissolved oxygen go down. Since the number was medium it shows us that the Conodoguinet Creek is not that polluted by doing this
"Water Supply and Treatment ." City of Bellingham Washington . Public Works Department , n.d. Web. .
much more prevalent, as well as prominent in the arena of social and political debate.
many ways to get water. You can buy water bottles from a store or get tap water from your
Conversations often turn into arguments when the topic of bottled water versus tap water comes up. Many say that tap water is simply unsafe while others argue that the chemicals in the plastic bottles release toxic or harmful substances into our bodies as well as the environment. However, some humans consume water from public water systems, personal wells, or even bottled water; whichever is most convenient for each particular lifestyle. Some of many reasons why tap water is the more logical choice are that it is cost-effective, suitable for the environment, and healthier for human consumption.
Three Medical Doctors wrote the book, The Water We Drink: Water Quality and Its Effects on Health. Their names are Joshua I. Barzilay, M.D., Winkler G. Weinberg, M.D., and J. William Eley, M.D. In order to put the issue of drinking water quality and its effects on health into perspective, the book is divided into three parts. It first reviews the history of water, disease, and sanitation. The next section deals with health issues. At the conclusion of the book are chapters regarding bottled water and methods of purification. The intent of the book is to educate consumers.
Possible errors include leaving in the test strips for too long, draining too much water into the aquatic chamber (overfilling/watering), and inverting the tubes for a shorter amount of time than required. Although there are many possible human errors that could be committed in this lab, it is important to note that the tools used for water testing could be expired and could therefore not work as well at detecting the proper levels for dissolved oxygen, pH, and nitrate.
...he dorm and the house. This is the reason that the tests in the lab gave data to support this new hypothesis: water from the tap in a residential area is less hard then areas farther away from the water purifying company.
The. Drinking Water: A History. New York: Overlook Duckworth, 2012. Print. The.
Water is one of the most essential non-renewable natural resources on the Earth. Technically, an un-hydrated human being can live no more than three days. In the United States, people consume water mainly from tap water and bottle water. However, the consumption between these two sources is not even but lean to one side heavily. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, people consume from 240 to over 10000 times more per gallon for bottled water than they usually do for tap water. (NRDC) In addition, according to a survey from US National Library of Medicines, only 17% of the participants prefer to drink tap water exclusively.(US National Library) Compared to the bottled water which is shining like a superstar, tap water is like a diligent worker in the shade, unpopular but useful. The extremely unbalance of bottled water consumption implies that a commonly hold conception exists: bottle water is superior to tap water. In fact, scientific evidence proves that tap water is nothing different than bottle water. More importantly, the excessive consumption of bottled water is an irrational use of resources and creates severe environmental issues.
The parameters of water quality are determined by how the water is going to be used. “Most of the parameters affirmed are focused on treating it for human consumption, industrial use and environment. The main water quality parameters that are measured in natural water are