Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hello,
I am requesting for my questions to be answered as I need to start my project soon. It is due in three or more weeks and we have to do at least 30hrs work on it, so I would like it to be fairly hard.

I have come up with a bit of an idea for my project, it is:

How does water quality affect the life and growth of living organisms? Does rain affect the water quality and is the growth of algae and other bacteria more common in stagnate water?

I highly think that the fist question How does water quality affect the life and growth of living organisms? Will be the center of my project and to measure it i would use some form of life, like snails, and some plants. what form of life could i use? Snails or Fish?
Where could I get a water testing kit and how could I measure the water quality without a kit?
what would be best to use to measure the progress of animals and plants?

Thankyou. Please answer ASAP

Hi,

It sounds like you have a fairly interesting question to begin. How does water quality affect the life and growth of living organisms? You may want to tweak it a little bit depending on what you decide to work with given that "living organisms" can include lots of things and they all require different conditions to grow. For instance, there are some bacteria that thrive in highly acidic conditions that kills off almost all other living organisms. For your project, I would suggest using either Daphnia or brine shrimp (also known as "sea monkeys") for your experiment. Brine shrimp may be easier to locate--you may even be able to find them in a local toy store. Daphnia can definitely be found online though you may have luck if you go to a local marine/fish store.

Here is a link to a science buddies experiment that is similar to the one you are proposing: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... p043.shtml

This one uses Daphnia. You also need to figure out how you are going to define and manipulate water quality. Do you plan on using filtered filtered water and comparing it to rain and tap water? Are you going to add common pollutants to the water? These are things to think about. I'm not sure you'll see a huge difference between filtered water, tap water, and rain water (though I would include these if I was conducting the experiment).


Suggestion from: http://ei.cornell.edu/toxicology/bioass ... onmnt.html
Using Daphnia bioassays, you can evaluate the toxicity of environmental samples. You might choose to test water from a local pond or stream, or runoff from your school parking lot after a storm. Another possibility is to test sediment from the stream bottom, dust and dirt from the parking lot, or soil from your school yard. Think about places where you would expect to find pollution, and try to come up with a question you could answer using bioassays.


Good luck with your project and post again if you have other questions.

Alexis