April 4/1

I learned that to conserve water people can

•  Take timed showers
• Turn off sprinklers when it rains
• Clean dishes when you fill up sink, not keep water running.

I also learned that properties of water include specific heat, boiling point, and that freezing point is 32 degrees Fahrenheit.

I learned density is related to how well something floats. The more dense it is the more buoyant something will be.

Lastly, I learned that different pollution can effect certain animals such as plastic bags when it comes to turtles, dolphins and whales, who could think they are just jellyfish. And also plastic pellets where as birds think they're eggs to find to their babies.

  

Wed. 4/10

Examples of a Lentic System

Lake: A body of water that's surrounded by land. (sunlight on reaches a small depth)

Pond: A small body of water. (sunlight for a pond reaches all the way down)

Playa Lake: A freshwater lake that's found in the desert that results from rainwater.

Swamp: A forested wetland that's similar to a marsh or bog but has trees.

Marsh: A waterlogged area that has patches of land and grasses dispersed throughout.

Bog: Wetland covered by a thick mat of dead or decomposing plants and mosses.

Reservoir: Man made or naturally occurring body of water that's used for water supply. 

Tuesday 4/8

Observations

What makes a good observation? 

A good observation is observing something using your sight, smell, and touch possibly. Mostly, when it comes to watching our aquarium we use just sight to observe any changes or interesting things happening.

I picked one of Mrs. Wind and Mrs. Wood's tank to observe. 

I noticed that there were some fish that didn't like each other and were very territorial.  That one also had a crayfish shell that might have been due to lack of feeding the crayfish. We think that particular one was eaten by the other crayfish or fish for we couldn't find it anywhere in the tank. We also noticed after a group did a test on the tank, that the water was terrible. It was a surprise that all the fish hadn't already been dead because the water was worse then ours in ammonia (I think). This is an important part of scientific inquiry because many observations have a scientific explanation that helps scientists determine what is a healthy environment for fish.

 

Tuesday 4/9

Ammonia/nitrate test

1. We gathered supplies we needed- the test tube, ammonia #1, ammonia #2, and the water sucker thingy.

2. We cleaned the test tube with the water from the aquarium we planned to test.

3. Next we filled the test tube to 5 mL with the tank water.

4. Add 8 drops of ammonia #1

5. Add 8 drops of Ammonia #2 

6. Mix it up

7. Wait 5 minutes 

8. Compare color with the freshwater card.

Nitrate Test

1. Grab the test tube nitrate 1 nitrate 2 and the water sucker thingy again.

2. Clean the test tube

3. Fill the tube to 5 mL

4. Add 10 drops of Nitrate

5. Shake Nitrate #2 for 30 seconds

6. Add 10 drops of Nitrate #2

7. Mix for 1 minute

8. Wait for 5 minutes

9. Compare color with the card.

            

Nitrate comes from the fish waste and if we don't clean our tanks our fish could get poisoned. 

Ammonia can come from tap water or decomposition water in the tanks. It can cause issues with the fishes organs and lead to death if not watched over.

Friday 4/3

Aquarium

Procedures (and materials included) : In order to get our fish ready for the aquarium we had to 

1. Grab sifters and clean the rocks- no soap

2. Put the clean rocks in a very large bucket while we worked on the dirty ones.

3. When all the rocks were cleaned we poured water in the tanks to scrub it with a sponge.

4. Scrub corners side and bottoms. 

5. Rinsed out tank.

6. Poured all the cleaned rocks into the bottom of our tank and smoothed them out.

7. Put in our decorations (buddah, Volcano, Grass, Dolphin with "no fishing" sign, and another plant)

8. Poured water in until a bout a inch from the top.

9. Put in conditioner, dechlorinator.

10. Plugged in volcano and watched bubbles come out

11. Fixed placing of our decorations.

Purpose: To make a clean and healthy environment for our fish.

Thurs. 4/4

Water Properties

My water property demo was the water cycle.  For our demonstration we set up an already created water cycle demonstration object that our teachers had nicely lended to us. :) We then put ice in the cloud holder and put a light on it to create condensation.  When it was our turn it did create condensation but did not rain a whole like like we wanted because it needed to sit under the light a ton longer.  And also our light broke when it tipped over but thankfully the ice did condense.

I've learned many different things about water properties.  When Joe and Victoria presented their demonstration in class I learned that fish use buoyancy and salt water makes the water more dense so you are more buoyant.  The more salty it is the more dense and buoyant you will be.  

Also, I learned what a solute and solvent is with Kaitlin and Kendall's demonstration. 1.) A solute is whats dissolved into another substance. 2.) A solvent is a component of the solution in which other substances dissolve, such as water.

When Colton and Mauricio and Mathew did there experiment, we learned that cohesion is grouping of water in one drop, adhesion was when water stuck to different things, and soft water creates more suds with soap than salt water.  It was important to marine life because it's hard for sea grasses to survive in hard water. The water has to be soft, according to them.

This basically summarizes what we learned that day, we learned tons more because their were over 20 people but these are just samples of what we did.

This will help me with my aquarium project because maybe some fish can't survive in salt water because of how buoyant it is or maybe there's certain solutes that can't be mixed in to the water if the fish are able to survive.  The different projects model a real ecosystem in different ways because all of these things are involved in different aquatic lifestyles.

   

Tuesday 4/4

The Water Cycle

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzY5-NZSzVw

The video I just posted is a demonstration of the water cycle and it helped me to get a general gist of what we were to present.  My partner and I learned that when water from all over the earth heats up, it evaporates then condenses when it hits the cool air it forms into clouds and the water vapor becomes heavy. When it becomes too heavy it precipitates and falls into run offs and supplies different lakes and rivers with water.  Also when water is absorbed by plants and released into water vapor by it's leaves it's called transpiration, another big part of the water cycle.  Then all of this goes on and on in a never ending cycle. Then we incorporated this into experiment in class. Mrs. Wood has my video but I can't find it. I'll try to post that if she gives it to us.