Water Issue

             The water topic that I choose was how prescription drugs affect water and lake organisms. Today our society is overrun by the use of prescription drugs; therefore our environment is greatly affected by these pharmaceuticals. In order to become more knowledgeable about my carbon footprint, I chose the topic most closely related to my impact on the aquatic environment. I have learned that there are two main ways that pharmaceuticals have become part of our environment: excretion and disposal. Through the process of excretion, prescription drugs in your body exit into the wastewater. People can also flush the unused medicine down the sink or toilet, which also leads to the lake water, like excretion. Even if the pharmaceuticals are thrown away, they end up in the dump and later seep into the groundwater. As the water becomes contaminated, the organisms become feminized, causing sterile species, and resulting in extinction. This topic is important to our society due to the cleanliness and availability of our water and food sources. Consequently, if proper disposal of prescription drugs is not taken seriously, our health will be at risk.

Water Property Demo

In class today, we did our water property demonstrations with our partners. The water property my group had was pH and litmus paper. The pH is a scale that determines if a substance is more acidic or basic. Our demonstration shows just that. We chose to demonstrate six different substances and where they compare to water. Every substance is acidic, basic, or neutral. That’s what we are trying to decide with this lab and our topic. When we explained that the red paper turns blue for bases and the blue paper turns red for acids, they could tell the difference between substances. Then we went on to tell them about water and how it applies to aquatic ecosystems. Pure water is neutral on the scale, neither acidic nor basic. That helps define the property of water as classifying it as neutral. This neutral property of water can be applied to the aquatic ecosystems. Rivers, ponds, lakes, and wetlands are aquatic ecosystems that have one thing in common, freshwater. Freshwater needs to be neutral in order for the plant life and fish not to be affected. Having a high acidic level and a high basic level can create bacteria causing the aquarium to be a harmful environment. In conclusion, the pH level should remain mostly neutral to keep the aquatic ecosystem a safe environment. The demo went as planned for the most part. We weren’t quite sure on how was going to say what, how the other students would do with the substances, or what order in which we would perform our demo. Having said that, I would say that it went pretty well for us.

Aside from my demo though, I enjoyed watching all the other demos. My favorite one was where they were talking about specific heat of water. The balloon would burn with no water in it, but wouldn’t burn with water in it due to a high specific heat of water. Another fun one was where they talked about the mixture, solution, and suspension. I liked how two substances could either mix or stay divided. Another cool demonstration was the density with water, oil, and alcohol. They colored the liquids in order to show how they all have different densities. One floated to the top, the other in the middle, and the final at the bottom. I also learned about adhesion and cohesion. Cohesion is where water only attracts water, while adhesion attracts other substances. In addition, turbidity is the measure of relative clarity of a liquid. I thought it was cool to learn about all these properties of water and enjoyed the demonstrations.

Aquarium Set Up

Today my aquarium set up went perfectly for my first time. The teacher went over how we were going to set it up and then we were on our own. The first thing you need in order to start setting it up would be an aquarium. My partner and I chose our own tank that was a 10 gallon one. After we acquired a fish tank, gravel was already in ours so we needed to clean it. We rinsed the gravel using sieves, cleaned all the decorations, and then even cleaned the filter inside and out. The filter was nasty to clean because it was so dusty. Once we were done with all that, we cleaned the actual tank using no soap and a brush the teacher gave us. We cleaned the aquarium twice because the water was dirty after the first time. Everything was now clean so we added our decorations to the aquarium and created hiding spots with them. The next step we took was adding water to the aquarium, but it was hard because the bucket to carry the water was heavy. We ended up having to ask a guy to help us. Since the water was added, we followed the instructions to add dechlorinator and bacteria supplement to the tank. Then we put the filter on and put water in it to run correctly. The filter started working and our tank water was not cloudy, so we didn’t have to start over! We finally finished by putting the lid on and cleaning up the mess we made. It was overall and interesting process that we successfully completed! 

Aquarium Plans

            I have never set up an aquarium before, so this is new to me. I can either use a bottle or a fish tank. I chose to use a fish tank and share it with one of my friends in the same class. I don’t want to have a big aquarium because there is only going to be two fish in it. My aquarium will have pretty gravel with cool decorations. It will remind me of the one in “Finding Nemo” because if I had a fish tank I always wanted it to look like that one. Maybe I will have a volcano that blows bubbles just like it too! The question is, what fish will I have? Meg plans on having a Beta, so I need a fish that will cooperate with it. I know for a fact that I won’t have another Beta because they don’t get along. I might get a Molly because it sounds cool. My goals for this aquarium are to keep the fish alive and make sure the tank is kept well.

            The Molly will do well in this assignment because they are adaptable fish and live well within a community. They would rather live in salt water, but they can live in freshwater too. The only thing that is a downside is that the Mollies grow to be four inches. They need a bigger tank reaching 15-20 gallons. So I need rethink which fish I should have in my tank. If I do get a Molly fish, at least I know that it will do well with the water and other fish.

Freshwater

In class we did a round robin activity with different topics. It was interesting to see all the different questions and answers that were discussed. Even though they were unique and interesting, I can only remember my group’s question. We had to come up with ways water is used. Of course there are the obvious uses, like drinking water, swimming, showering, and rain. Then there are the ones most people would not think of, like energy. Water is used for many things and is a part of everyday life.

There were many different topics for the round robin activity, but I just can’t remember at the moment. Instead I will talk about freshwater uses, properties, and ways to conserve our resources. When I think of freshwater, I picture the lake and anything except the ocean. Freshwater is used for many things in the world, even though it only makes up three percent of total water. Uses of water include agricultural, industrial, household, recreational, and environmental activities.

Water does not only have many uses, but a lot of properties too! There is adhesion and cohesion, buoyancy, surface tension, capillary action, density, temperature, dissolved oxygen, hardness, ph, mixture, solution, suspension, specific heat, solvent, solute, conductivity, turbidity, water cycle, and porosity. Since water is used in many ways with its different properties, there are ways we can conserve our freshwater. For example, choose landscape for your house that is appropriate for the climate and then water is lessened. Save water and take less time in the shower! You don’t need to take thirty minutes to shower. Do laundry and dishes when the load is full. Another way to conserve water is to eat less meat and buy fewer things. Turn off the tap water while you brush your teeth or wash your face. The main thing is to RECYCLE though! We use so much water each day so do the world a favor and do not waste water.