Team: 25
School: Corona High
Area of Science: Water Quality
Interim: Team Number: 025
School Name: Corona Public Schools
Area of Science: Water Quality
Project Title: Think Before You Drink
Problem Definition:
Approximately 844 million people worldwide lack access to clean drinking water; this is more than 1 of every 10 people on the planet (worldvision.org). Water is essential for survival. Water that is safe and available is important for public health, whether used for drinking, domestic use, food production, or recreational purposes. According to the World Health Organization, “Improved water supply and sanitation, and better management of water resources, can boost a countries’ economic growth and can contribute greatly to poverty reduction.†(who.int) Water.org claims, “Nearly 1 million people die each year from water, sanitation, and hygiene-related diseases which could be reduced with access to safe water or sanitation. Every 2 minutes, a child dies from a water-related disease.†(water.org)
Problem Solution:
Access to safe and clean water can be as simple as providing a low cost and efficient filtration system. Filtration systems should be able to filter harmful bacteria, viruses, and other materials from water sources. Many efforts are currently being made to combat this issue. Planet Water Foundation has created “Aqua Towers†that serve schools, children, and rural communities worldwide with clean water and health education services. (classy.org) Other simpler solutions that have been created include the Lifestraw. Lifestraw helps make contaminated water safe to drink and brings potable water to undeveloped nations. Introduced in 1994, this unique technology uses a cloth filter to block contaminating diseases, making water secure to drink.
We plan to help others visualize the benefits of clean water to model the problem and propose some possible solutions with a computer simulation. We plan to create a water filter simulation in NetLogo. Here are some of our goals with that simulation:
We plan to use agents to represent the water, the water contaminants, and various filtering materials. When the Setup button is pressed, contaminated water agents represented by blue and brown Turtles will be introduced at the top of the NetLogo Interface. Several layers of filters will also appear horizontally below the contaminated water. These will be composed of agents that represent the texture and color of each filter. When the Go button is pressed, the water agents will randomly “fall†to the reservoir at the bottom of the screen. As the agents contact various filters, some of the contamination will be removed, represented by some brown agents being replaced with blue agents. Once all the water reaches the reservoir at the bottom, the water should be less contaminated. Sliders and switches will be used on the Interface to allow the filters to be adjusted by the user to determine what filters work best.
Progress to Date:
We have gathered research to understand better the global need for safe and readily available drinking water. We have also researched current initiatives to combat this issue. Many large companies, including Microsoft, World Health Organization, Planet Water Foundation, and others, have current plans to provide access as soon as possible. We are continuing to learn the basics of Netlogo to build and refine our planned model.
Expected Results:
We expect to explore the global issue of safe drinking water and provide some fundamental solution ideas. The NetLogo model will help students visualize how water filtration systems work and how they could be used to improve our drinking water. Students will explore the effects of various filters and hopefully conclude that the solution to creating an effective filtration system is not just using one type of filter or method but rather a combination of filtration methods. In the end, we hope this project will make students more aware of the importance of safe drinking water and realize the global impact of this issue.
Team Member: Hitch Dunlap, Brindle Racher, Emma Mulnix
Sponsoring Teachers: Amanda Dunlap and Samuel Hindi
Team Members:
Hitch Dunlap
Emma Mulnix
Brindle Racher
Sponsoring Teacher: Amanda Dunlap