Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Last month, i competed at regional level for ISEF and placed in 4th with honorable mention in my catogory, now I want to continue my project. In my project i was trying to test to see if an oil spill would affect the development of a hurricane. This past year, I just tested the evaportation rate between two tanks one with oil and one without oil and compared the evapporation rates. Now to farther my research, I want to add some factors like crude oil, oil eating bacteria and high winds and see how they together affect the oil. I hope to prove my theory from last year that oil spills can affect hurricanes due to significant changes in evaporation rates. I will do this by measuring the differences in waves height and lenth between the waves created by the wind oil and the control tank. I expect there to be a change because oil calms water through surface tension, but I really need to find a way to add these factors to my experimental design. I would be gratiful for any ideas on how collect oil eating bacteria, crude oil or build a fan that produces 30+ winds.

Rob - 10th grader from Delaware

Hi Rob!
First off, congratulations on the great work you've done so far! Kudos to you for wanting to continue your project, because students who choose to continue with their projects often get much better results due to the large amount of time and effort they spend on perfecting their projects. So now onto ideas for you - it can be pretty hard to obtain "industry-grade" oil-eating microbes such as the ones they have been using to treat the Gulf Spill, but there are definitely some sources out there that can give you some less powerful microbes. I've compiled a list of some sites you might want to check out to see if you're interested:

http://www.greenboatstuff.com/clwasooileam.html

http://www.epa.gov/oilspill/ncp/bagents.htm - The links can give you information on specific products

http://www.amazon.com/Oilsponge-AB-Oil- ... B004I08OLK

Here is a similar question asked by another student about obtaining crude oil, and I definitely agree and recommend that you talk to your teacher about asking the school to try and help you get the closest thing possible.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index ... 746AARdR7z

In terms of making a fan that strong, I think that your best bet might be to try and look into industry products - perhaps air conditioning suppliers to see if they carry such powerful fans. Hope this helps!

Thank you, for the links.