Help needed: Ozone testing

Ask questions about projects relating to: biology, biochemistry, genomics, microbiology, molecular biology, pharmacology/toxicology, zoology, human behavior, archeology, anthropology, political science, sociology, geology, environmental science, oceanography, seismology, weather, or atmosphere.

Moderators: AmyCowen, kgudger, bfinio, MadelineB, Moderators

lakshu_s
Posts: 207
Joined: Fri Aug 26, 2016 11:48 am
Occupation: Student

Re: Help needed: Ozone testing

Post by lakshu_s »

Thanks so much Mr.Willey. This really helps. Let me go over everything once and get better understanding before I start my actual experiment. I will keep you informed as I progress. But really thanks for your time.

Thanks,
Lakshu
lakshu_s
Posts: 207
Joined: Fri Aug 26, 2016 11:48 am
Occupation: Student

Re: Help needed: Ozone testing

Post by lakshu_s »

Dear Mr.Willey,

I started with my project. I need some help. I am finding hard time finding ozone concentration using strips since we have only 4 groups (low, medium, high, extremely high). Please find below my steps involved and correct me if I am wrong in proceeding the project.

1. First I started finding ozone concentration inside my home which was low. This is my control group.
2. Next, I selected few places far from highway (which has more trees, woods). There I got ozone concentration either as low or medium.
3. Now my next target is to find places near highway which should give ozone concentration as high or extremely high. I don't think we would never get extremely high.
4. I went to the Air data map you were mentioning before to see where the ozone concentration is high. I see always one place which is Blair Street, st.louis. Is this the place where ozone is high or it is just the station?

Please provide your suggestions.

Thanks,
Lakshita.
LeungWilley
Former Expert
Posts: 409
Joined: Mon Jan 12, 2009 11:15 pm
Occupation: Electrical Engineer
Project Question: n/a
Project Due Date: n/a
Project Status: Not applicable

Re: Help needed: Ozone testing

Post by LeungWilley »

Hi Lakshu,
The steps you have outlined in your last post looks reasonable. I would like to suggest the following for each of your item number:
1. Ok, this sounds reasonable to make sure the test strip behaves as expected.

2. I am a little concern about this one. If I recall correctly, the independent variable that you are changing is "distance away" from the highway. Ideally, the locations that you select should be as close to being the same as possible. (For example, if location 1 is a residential neighborhood, location 2 should also be a residential neighborhood.) Introducing trees / woods would be another variable that you will need to account for.

3. I think you are correct that it's unlikely that you will get an extremely high reading. From the data at the Blair street station, (I downloaded the annual dataset for 2018, and searched for "ozone" in column "I") it looks like the average ozone at this location was 0.0460ppm. The maximum reading was recorded on June 6, 2018 @ 3pm with a reading 0.121ppm which would be the "Extremely High" box on the test strip. However, since we are outside of the summer months now, I would expect your reading to be somewhere between these two ranges. As another point of reference, the https://gispub.epa.gov/airnow/ shows an average daily ozone concentration of 58ppb for September 17th, 2018.

4. I am sorry to say that I am not sure. I would guess that it's a little bit of both. Like you, I think the EPA had the similar idea that ozone and other pollutant will be have higher concentration near the highway so they setup the data recorder there.

Hope that helps. Good Luck with your experiment and please post again if we can be of any further help!
Willey
lakshu_s
Posts: 207
Joined: Fri Aug 26, 2016 11:48 am
Occupation: Student

Re: Help needed: Ozone testing

Post by lakshu_s »

Dear Mr.Willey,

Thanks for your mail. I get what you are saying.

As we know we have 4 ranges in ozone strip
<90 which is <45.1 ppb - low
90 - 150 which is 45.1 - 75.2 ppb - Medium
150-210 which is 75.2 - 105 ppb - High
>210 which is >105 ppb - Extremely high

As we talked earlier, yes my IV is distance from highway (in feet). Regarding the readings, I was mentioning the below that is currently I am experimenting.

1. I selected 3 locations - very far distances from highway (neighborhood with more trees). I considered old neighborhoods with more trees.
For these I got ozone concentration as low

2. I also tested with 3 locations - less far distance from highway (again neighborhood - i didn't really care about trees). For this I got ozone concentration as medium

3. Now plan is to select 3 locations (near highway) - I am planning to select offices/doctor offices/mall which is on the highway.
Hope to see ozone concentration from medium - high.

Please let me know if any further suggestions on my above testing. for each location I did 3 trials. As mentioned I will go to Blair street and record ozone.

If required for the graph I will collect data for few more locations in each category rather than sticking to just 3. Let me know your thoughts.

Thanks,
Lakshita
LeungWilley
Former Expert
Posts: 409
Joined: Mon Jan 12, 2009 11:15 pm
Occupation: Electrical Engineer
Project Question: n/a
Project Due Date: n/a
Project Status: Not applicable

Re: Help needed: Ozone testing

Post by LeungWilley »

Hi Lakshita,
The setup described in your post sounds good!
At this time, I really don't have much to add.
Good Luck and Have fun with the experiment!
Willey
lakshu_s
Posts: 207
Joined: Fri Aug 26, 2016 11:48 am
Occupation: Student

Re: Help needed: Ozone testing

Post by lakshu_s »

Hi Mr.Willey,

My project is coming into good shape :-). I have collected all readings before fall and started with my theory. Project submission at school is on Jan 16th. I am planning to be done with everything during Christmas break. I am really confused on how to plot the graph. I would need your help and suggestion on this.
Since ozone strips gives us only ranges (low, medium, high and extremely high), I am confused how to plot these ranges in Y-axis. I take the distance in miles in X-axis. I am thinking of line graph.
I usually use online graph tool (https://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/createagraph/ ) to plot the graph. I am confused how to plot the ranges. Please suggest. Is there any other way?

Thanks,
Lakshita
LeungWilley
Former Expert
Posts: 409
Joined: Mon Jan 12, 2009 11:15 pm
Occupation: Electrical Engineer
Project Question: n/a
Project Due Date: n/a
Project Status: Not applicable

Re: Help needed: Ozone testing

Post by LeungWilley »

Hi Lakshita,
Glad to hear that your project is going well!

I finally had a chance to look at the online graph tool that you had provided in the link and I would like to suggest that you substitute the following for the o-zone strip data:
Low = 1
Medium = 2
High = 3
Extremely High = 4

The reason for this substitution is because the tool can only handle "number" so we need to convert the data that you collected. In fact, you can use other number set (such as 25, 50, 75, 100) to represent your data. (I chose 1,2,3,4 because they were the first set of numbers that came to mind.)

At any rate, under the data tab of graph tool, you can now put "distance" - x-axis under the "Item label" column and "Value" will be the ozone data using the scale (1,2,3,4) above. Please make sure to add in all of the data labels (for example, what does Low, Medium represent on the test strip?) onto the chart. There are other tools that we can use but let's see if you like the results of this first.

Please continue the great work and Good Luck!
Willey
lakshu_s
Posts: 207
Joined: Fri Aug 26, 2016 11:48 am
Occupation: Student

Re: Help needed: Ozone testing

Post by lakshu_s »

Hi Mr.Willey,

Thanks for your help. I tried plotting as you said.
Below are the problems I face
- I couldn't label what the values are (1,2,3,4) as Low, medium, high, extremely high. I was thinking of putting the ranges as well. But this tool doesn't allow me to do that.
- Also the X-axis values are shown as it is entered. For example if it goes as 0,0.1,0.3, 0.6, 1.5, then it shows on the graph as it is. I was thinking of putting in the multiples of 0.2 as 0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.6 and so on.

I will send you my sample graph as well. But do you think if I can use any other tool. Please suggest. In science fair, they concentrate more on graph and it should bring in all the details :-(

Thanks again for your time.
Lakshita
lakshu_s
Posts: 207
Joined: Fri Aug 26, 2016 11:48 am
Occupation: Student

Re: Help needed: Ozone testing

Post by lakshu_s »

Hi Mr.Willey,

Also I found another tool, https://www.onlinecharttool.com. Here also I am facing similar problems.

Thanks,
Lakshita
LeungWilley
Former Expert
Posts: 409
Joined: Mon Jan 12, 2009 11:15 pm
Occupation: Electrical Engineer
Project Question: n/a
Project Due Date: n/a
Project Status: Not applicable

Re: Help needed: Ozone testing

Post by LeungWilley »

Hi Lakshita,
Sorry to hear about the issues. I think we are going to need to go to a true spreadsheet program to do these graphs. Do you have access to "Google Sheets" (this is a free tool on google drive. It may be also be part of google classroom). Otherwise, Microsoft Excel is another option that we can try.

Please let me know and I can create a sample template for you to get started with.

Thanks!
Willey
lakshu_s
Posts: 207
Joined: Fri Aug 26, 2016 11:48 am
Occupation: Student

Re: Help needed: Ozone testing

Post by lakshu_s »

Dear Mr.Willey,

Happy Thanksgiving. Thanks for your help. Yes I have both Google sheets and Excel. Sure please guide me with sample data so I can go ahead and use that.

Thanks,
Lakshita
LeungWilley
Former Expert
Posts: 409
Joined: Mon Jan 12, 2009 11:15 pm
Occupation: Electrical Engineer
Project Question: n/a
Project Due Date: n/a
Project Status: Not applicable

Re: Help needed: Ozone testing

Post by LeungWilley »

Hi Lakshita,
Thanks and I hope you had a great Thanksgiving Holiday as well!

Since you have access to both of these programs, I would like to suggest that we start with Excel as this is probably the most flexible program.

Please open the Excel app and select the option for a “Blank workbook.” This should bring up a spreadsheet with a lot of empty “cells”. Just so that we are using the same term, each “cell” is identified by the column and row header. For example, the first cell at the upper left hand corner is called “A1” because it is in column A and row 1.
To generate the graph, we will need to enter the data into this worksheet. For the data that you have collected, we will put the data into two columns A and B. Column A will be the “Distance From the Source (mi)” and Column B will be the “Ozone level” (using the same 1 to 4 scale that we discussed in previous post.) Please put the text identifying what each column means

So, using the number from your previous post, it may look something like this: (I made up the Ozone level for showing you how this might look)

Distance from Source (mi) Ozone Level
0 4
0.1 2
0.3 2
0.6 3
1.5 1

At this point, please “save” the file by going to the File tab and click on save. Please save it to a folder on the computer or a disk where you can find it again. (We will want to make sure that we “save” every the file every 5 to 10 minutes) Once this is done, excel should bring up your table.

Now, here’s the fun part, we are going to create the graph. To do this, first, select all of the cells of this table by holding down the left mouse button and dragging across these cells. When the cells are selected, they should show up with a “grayish” background

Next, find the “Magnifying Glass” in the middle part of the screen. (It should say “Tell me what you want to do”) Please click on this text and type in “Create Chart” and hit “ENTER” This should bring up a new window titled “Insert Chart” with a couple of different type of chart on the left hand side. I like the first one called “Scatter” but you can click on the other one and see if you like one of them better. Once you find the one you like, please hit “OK”. Once you hit ok, a graph should appear in the worksheet.

Now we are going to add all of the important information that’s missing with the ones from the website. First though, let’s make this chart it’s own page. Please “right-click” on the chart and select “Move Chart”. This should bring up a new window. Please select “New Sheet” and hit OK. This should make the graph as it own sheet.
(At this point, this will be a good place to “SAVE”)

The next couple of things that we are going to do are:
1. Add a title to the X-Axis so people know what’s the unit of measurement
2. Add a title to the Y-Axis so people know what 1 to 4 means.
3. Finally, we are going to use the text box tools so that you can add text anywhere you think would help people understand the information you are trying to present.

For the X-Axis, in the menu bar, please left-click on “DESIGN” under the “Chart Tools” shaded area. (It should be very near the magnifying glass that we previously used.) Now click on the icon that says “Add Chart Element” and select “Axis Titles” and then select “Primary Horizontal.” A box should then appear under the X-axis and you can now put in what this axis means by double clicking on it and typing in the text that you want (Distance from Source in Miles?)
For the Y-Axis, we will repeat these steps except we will be selecting “Primary Vertical” this time. Similar to the X-axis title, please double click on the box and you can now add in a description.

Finally, for adding additional information to the graph (such as what 1 represent in PPM for the ozone level observed), you can use the text box tool. At the “Magnifying Glass,” please type in “Text Box” and then hit the “Enter” key, this should bring up cursor. You can then left click on where you would like to put this information on the chart and then start typing. (You can move the box later if you decide that it’s not in the right spot later)

Ok, I think that this should get you started with the chart.

Good Luck and Please let us know if you have any questions.
Willey
lakshu_s
Posts: 207
Joined: Fri Aug 26, 2016 11:48 am
Occupation: Student

Re: Help needed: Ozone testing

Post by lakshu_s »

Dear Mr.Willey,
Thanks so much for your time. Really appreciate your help. I will definitely go over the steps you mentioned and get started with graph this weekend. I will let you know for my questions after I complete.

Thanks,
Lakshita
lakshu_s
Posts: 207
Joined: Fri Aug 26, 2016 11:48 am
Occupation: Student

Re: Help needed: Ozone testing

Post by lakshu_s »

Dear Mr.Willey,

Wish you and your family Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2019. Finally the project is coming in good shape and I am almost done with my theory as well. My next steps are to write log book, and paste in project board. This Christmas break I have to work hard on this. Jan 16th is the submission date. I have worked on plotting the graph in excel as you suggested. I am attaching the same here. Can you please let me know if any changes to be made? Thanks so much for your help from the beginning of this project.
lakshu_s
Posts: 207
Joined: Fri Aug 26, 2016 11:48 am
Occupation: Student

Re: Help needed: Ozone testing

Post by lakshu_s »

Dear Mr.Willey,

Guess the graph attachment was missing in my previous post. Attaching herewith again for your reference.

Thanks,
Lakshu

[The extension docx has been deactivated and can no longer be displayed.]

Locked

Return to “Grades 6-8: Life, Earth, and Social Sciences”