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Protecting the Health of St. Francis

Organization(s):St. Francis Xavier Catholic School
Country:United States of America
Student(s):Keefer Stiles
Grade Level:Middle School (grades 6-8, ages 11-14)
GLOBE Educator(s):Amy Woods
Contributors:
Report Type(s):International Virtual Science Symposium Report
Protocols:Nitrates, pH
Presentation Video: View Video
Language(s):
Date Submitted:04/10/2019
This experiment is designed to see if the water that is being provided to the St. Francis Xavier Catholic School students and staff from the Gettysburg Municipal Authority (GMA) has the same values as Marsh Creek in which the water comes from. The hypothesis states that if Marsh Creek is the source water for the Gettysburg Municipal Authority, then the St. Francis water from the fountains and faucets, should have different levels of salt, pH, chlorine, phosphate, and nitrate because if they have close to the same levels, the testing would indicate that the GMA would be adding too much or too little of the chemicals used to treat drinking water. The independent variable is the location of the water testing. The dependent variables measured are the salt (ppt), chlorine (ppm), pH, nitrate (ppm), and phosphate (ppm) levels of Marsh Creek and SFXCS water. The controlled variables are the amount of water, time of testing, and the protocols. This experiment was conducted by using LaMotte water quality kits to test the quality of Marsh Creek, the SFXCS water fountain, and the SFXCS water faucet. The data did not support the hypothesis, because the data was close to the same levels of all of the dependent variables at all of the locations. This is because partially there is not enough data to fully go into the investigation, and also because the stream is healthy enough that the water is not treated as much so that would be why the stream has similar values to the SFXCS water. This project will be continued and more data, throughout the seasons will be collected and analyzed. Keywords: Water Quality, GMA, Source


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Comments

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Abiodun Ogunbiyi
5 Years Ago
Is there any way we can have a look at how you obtained your standard deviation as shown in your video?
I wish you all the best.
Keep up the good work.
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Student 4 of Amy Woods-Science 8 Abiodun Ogunbiyi
5 Years Ago
Dear Dr. Ogunbiyi,
Thank you for reading my project! Thank you for asking about my standard deviation calculation. When I was figuring out the standard deviation, I created a new spreadsheet in Google Spreadsheets and put all of my raw data in that spreadsheet. Each test and location was its own column (ex. Salt~Marsh Creek, Salt~SFXCS Water, etc.). After I inserted the raw data (all of the original data collected straight from the testing sites), I selected the column boxes with the data, and pressed the Function button and went to “STDEV,” and put the result into its own row. I rounded the standard deviation to the correct significant figures based on my instrument used to collect the data. When I inserted the rounded standard deviation into the chart, I went into “Series” and then changed the series to the specific title. Then I entered the standard deviation, changing the type to constant and entering the standard deviation in the value to find out how spread out my data was. I used the standard deviation to calculate the error bars on the charts. Thank you for taking the time to learn more about my project and encouraging me.

Sincerely,
Keefer Stiles