Need Help With A Science Project For School

[GobyMaster]

Hey everyone, I attend a Science Focus Program for school, and we have to do a big research project for the end of the year, and I have come up with mine, but I need some help with some stuff.

See, there's this small creek that runs right next to our school, Antelope Creek, and I wanted to do an experiment to see how the water chemistry and water levels would change day to day, then hypothesize what factors would have caused any fluctuations.

Do you have any tips for checking the water chemistry, like what should be the major pollutants that I should look for?

I already know about nitrate, nitrite, chlorine, the stuff that I mainly know from aquaria, but I was wondering if there would be any other stuff that I should look for.



No, I'm not asking for you to do my homework, I'm just looking for some tips on what to look for.


Thanks in advance,
GobyMaster

 

[Tolak]

Testing for hardness, which could vary with differing weather conditions, as well as total dissolved solids. You can often find cheap TDS meters online for around $25.

 

[helterskelter]

Contact the local water authorities and see if they have been testing the water, if you can get a copy of past reports this will give you an idea of that their looking for and what they have seen.

On your fish farm (UK) they used to come every 2 weeks and test the water. They tested for

Ammonia
Nitrites
Nitrates
BOD (Biological Oxygen Demand)
Suspended solids
O2 levels

As well as several other things.
By testing us and several other locations they could see if we was responsible for any problems or to trace problem back to a rough section of the river.

Also taking regular water volumes and flow ates are handy

Find a straight section 2-3 m long with even banks and a flat bottom.
Measurer the width and depth in several locations and get an average.
This will give you the volume then measure how fast the water the water flows and then you can work how much water at that time there is in the creek.
This can be very interesting as our river was only small but even on a low summers day we still had over 15 million liters of water per day through the farm.

 

[LauraFrog]

Do suspended solids, that's really easy. Measured by working out how much water you have to put in a tube before you can no longer see markings on the bottom due to murkiness.

I'd check for phosphate. It's a common fertiliser/pesticide runoff pollutant and it can cause serious problems with aquatic weeds and damaging aquatic animals. Test kits are available online, you can test your aquarium for it too. (Plant nuts who add heaps of fertilisers check to make sure their phosphates aren't through the roof and gunna wipe all their fish out.)

 

[helterskelter]

Add phosphate to my list as well.
just one on the things i could not think of last night.

 

[GobyMaster]

Cool, thanks!

I'll take some of that advice!