Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Raditaton and UV light does is reflection really bounce to un pufrifeid water causing it to purife?

Hi Daniella,

I didn't exactly understand your question. UV irradiation from what is called a germicidal lamp can be used to kill bacteria and fungi in water. The UV light damages their DNA and prevents them from growing. Water exposed to UV is purified from microbial contamination, but it may still not be pure. It can be contaminated with lead, mercury, organic chemicals or pesticides and UV would not remove these.

Can you be more specific in explaining what you are thinking of doing as a project? The more information you provide, the easier it is for us to help you!

Best wishes,

Sybee

Hi Daniella,

I think the information in this project will help you: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... p025.shtml

Please post again (in this same thread) if you have more questions.

Heather

Hello Sybee,

To be exact I don't know what I wanna focus on my project, I just know so far that I wanna focus on water am not sure if on the purification process, then again I am interested on testing and researching my project on how and why sun Radiations/UV light semi purify or change the regular water.

i know it been a long time. I would liket ot this project but I have had a comment that this project isnt really innovated it had been done before, but is there some way that I can just make it work some how maybe
am really frustated I have every thing almost done

Hi Daniella,

Hey, I'm sorry you’re getting frustrated over this. I'll try to help. The project that Heather suggested--

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... #procedure

sounds similar to what you said you wanted to try, but it uses a lamp rather than the sun. While it is true that a lamp will give you a constant, uninterrupted source of light that contains the ultraviolet wavelengths that kill bacteria, the point of your project was to test sunlight as the purifier. Think about where people might want to use this method. They won't have a lamp. All they have is the sun and some water bottles.

OK. If this is the project you want to do, how can you make it uniquely yours? First off, I would try to use sunlight for purification since that is what the project is trying to demonstrate. Do you have lots of sunny days where you live and is the air pretty clear? Clouds and smog will absorb a lot of the ultraviolet light, so you need to do the experiment on a day when you expect to have at least 6 hours of sunlight with no clouds.

There are two other things I think you could do to improve the purification—one is easy and one is hard. The easy one would be to make a reflector out of aluminum foil to concentrate the sunlight on the bottles. This would be something that could be done by people even in a country with limited resources.

Here’s the hard one. The other thing that I think would improve the sterilization effect would be to rig up a device that rotates or rocks the bottles so that the water would be more evenly exposed to sunlight. Ultraviolet is easily absorbed by particles in the water, by algae and bacteria, and even by pollutants. If you can think of some way to move the bottles around while they are being irradiated, the purification might work better. This could be one of your variables as could the sun reflector.

I hope I have given you some ideas to think about in shaping your project. We’ll be here to help when you have more questions. Just repost to this same thread so we have all the questions and answers together. And I want to emphasize this. If YOU have ideas about how you think the project should be done, don’t hesitate to say so. We are here to guide you—not tell you what to do!

All the best,

Sybee

My thesis
Does agitation of water with an aluminion reflection increase the ability rate to purify water?

Basicaly am doing to things
One am lookin to see if it purifies and two the rate if its faster
Am hving dificultties. Determining howto test. The rate.
Does ny oneknow?

Ok thanks sybee but you just lifted some weight off me
So my thesis is now
Does agitation of water with an aluminion reflectiom increase the ability rate to purify water

Now i will test the accuracy. And if it really purifies it

Do you know how to test acuracy??

One idea could be to test accuracy against a control, or standard of comparison. If you could some way compare the results you receive to the absolutely pure water standard (DI water/distilled water), you would have a measure of accuracy. Please let me know if you have any other questions!

So my teacher said I shouldnt have alot of Values I should just focus on purifying the water with Sodis Process and water movement. I have looked into water agitations devices but cant seem to find the right one I looked in youtube so I couldnt find any thing so am thinking of creating a motor that will vibrate and use a aluminum platform then placing the water bottle on top of the platform