Science project help

[MooseTheGoose]

For our model we were thinking of having two plastic containers (sealed) connected by a tube tilting downwards. Under and on top of the second tube there is a plastic bag filled with cold water. If we put salt water/ocean water in the first container, leave it outside for a day, would the sun evaporate the sea water leaving behind the salt, the vapor will flow down wards therefore through the tube and into the other compartment. When the vapor meets the colder surface, it would condense. Would this work to desalinize the water?

[norman40]

Hi MooseTheGoose,

Yes, evaporating and condensing sea water is a way to remove the salt. There is a Science Buddies project aimed at building and testing a solar powered device for desalinating water:

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... on#summary

You may be able to adapt the desalinating device for your project purposes. And the background information may be useful as well.

I hope this helps. Please ask again if you have more questions.

A. Norman

[MooseTheGoose]

Thank you Norman for the link and the response. I was also wondering if it’s nessesairy to include the bags of cold water on the second compartment of my project for that the water vapours would condense into liquid form like the project in the link?

Also my project will have two plastic containers which each have a hole in them so that a tennis ball container (opened and cut on one side) could be hotglued to connect the two containers. Will the project still be able to work like this?

[norman40]

Hi MooseTheGoose,

The apparatus you described should work. Cooling the container that collects the condensed water should help a bit.

You may get a lot of condensation in the sea water container. And some of this will run down the sides of the container instead of into your collector. The design in the project that I posted previously uses a cone-shaped top to direct the condensation into a funnel for collection. You might want to try something like this in your design. Or you might try insulating the sea water container to reduce the condensation in it.

I hope this helps. Please ask again if you have more questions.

A. Norman