Question about Water Quality Project

[deleted-302041]

I'm testing on the contaminants and chemicals on the water people drink and these chemicals can cause problems in the body like organ failure, cancer, etc. I need help on determining what type of water I should test on and fixing on my problem statement or the topic.

So far I have this (I need help if what I did is alright or if not how can I fix it?)
Topic Title Sample: Is your drinking water safe?
Problem Statement: What is the affect of Home filtration On lead, chlorine, hardness/ total dissolved solids.
Hypothesis: It is hypothesized that if the filter technology is better then the water quality is safer for your health because it has more capability to remove more bad substances.
Null: There will be no difference in the amount of chemicals each filter will remove from regular tap water and the mineral water will remain the same.

Thx.

I found this project based on https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... p024.shtml

[deleted-287099]

Hello, fancis_martin,

Thank you for submitting your question. Your question should be the problem statement you wrote. The hypothesis should also be the hypothesis you wrote.

Unfortunately, I think this project is not a terrific idea in its current state. I like the idea of testing the quality of drinking water because it gets the audience a little scared and definitely interested. However, it should be fairly common sense/common knowledge that a better filter is going to clean better. In addition, how do you quantify the quality of the filter?

I think you're onto something. With a few tweaks, your project could be right at home in an eighth grade Science Fair. Perhaps you could change your question to something along the lines of, "How does filter material affect the quantity of bacterial colonies in water?" I could see changing your title accordingly, but I could also see leaving it the way it is. It is a catchy title.

Here are some suggestions for filter materials to test: paper coffee filter, cheesecloth, polyester, etc.

Let me know if you have any other questions or need other suggestions. We are here to help.

Good luck with your Science Fair!

- Ultra

[SciB]

Hi Francis,

Water pollution and how to eliminate is a great topic and you can certainly make a good science fair project based on it.

If you are interested in how well home water purification systems work, why don't you do a comparison of two purifiers--for example, Brita and ZeroWater. You could do some research on each one so that you understand how they work and then explain how this affects their ability to remove a variety of contaminants. If you go to the company's website you can read their claims and then test them by an experiment to see if they are true.

Or, if you want to try and make a simple, inexpensive filter purifier that people in countries with limited access to drinkable water could use, then there are projects for that. Here's one example: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... p030.shtml

We can't tell you what project to do. You have to think about it carefully and decide what YOU are interested in most and then we can help you with the details. The main difficulty with water pollution projects is measuring the concentration of specific contaminants like lead or pesticide before and after the purification treatment. There are ways to do this with fairly simple equipment and we can help you once you decide on a hypothesis.

Be sure to read and understand the Scibuddies Science Fair Project Guide if you haven't already done that.

Let us know specifically where you want to go with this and we will help you make it work.

Sybee

[deleted-302041]

Thank you, Ultra and SciB
The way I'm doing this is that I'm going to try to compare carbon filters (Brita) and Zerowater (Deionization), if I can add Reverse Osmosis ill try or DIY's that other poor countries use, to tap water.....
I'm going to buy a test kit from the internet where I send samples they sell 60 samples for $50 http://www.karlabs.com/watertestkit/ where they show you how much Lead, Total dissolved solids etc. OR I can just measure only the Total dissolved solids since that already determines how much hardness there is in water (Water in tap doesn't have much minerals in them so most of solids are chemicals).
THX SO MUCH
I found this project based on https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... p024.shtml

[deleted-310782]

I can't find the purpose of my science project. please help
my hypothesis is If a 1/3 cup of water is put into 2 cups of water then an egg will float.
please help
(NEED HELP ASAP)

[deleted-71603]

Hello lena0915.

Your question is off topic from the original poster's question. If you would like help, please start a new thread and tell us a little more about what you are trying to investigate.

Thanks for using Science Buddies!