Water Plantation Field Trip

On Thursday November 12, 2009 my class went on a field trip to a water plantation. There they showed us the 6 cycles in making water clean and all about dirty water and how if us humans don't stop polluting the water a high population of us can get sick with a disease called cholera.

Since there are 6 cycles in making water clean, we went to 6 stations.

The first station we went to had to do with Garbage Removal Through Coarse & Fine Filters. The purpose of that station is to take the garbage out of the water so only the water will make it through. We saw the way a giant clamp came and scooped up all the rubbish at the bottom of the river water that was being filtered. Some rubbish fell but our teacher said that it would be taken away in the filter.

At the second station they put the chemicals in the water and stirred it so all the dirt particles would stick together and create FLOC. We got to see how dirty it was when all the dirt particles stuck together.

After that we went to the third station where they allowed the sediment and floc to settle at the bottom. The purpose of that stations is as I said before so that the sediment and floc could settle at the bottom. There we saw pools of water 6 meters deep sitting still. That is because they were not touching it and all they did was let it settle.

At station 4 they were filtering the water through a meter of sand. They did that to filter out all tiny dirt particles. We didn't see much except for pools of water with sand at the bottom. My friend and I wondered: Where does the water go after it goes through the sand?

Station 5 was about chemicals and disinfectants being added to the water. The purpose of that station is to kill all the bad things inside the water. It smelled a lot like chlorine and it was a really interesting station.

After station 5, we moved into our last station: Station 6. At that station they did testing to make sure the water was safe and clean. There we saw many things like beakers, Erlenmeyer flasks, test tubes and test tube racks. The tour guides showed us a before beaker and an after beaker filled with the water that came from the dirty river. Surprisingly it was very clean.

We had so much fun at the water plantation looking at the ways they make dirty river water clean by a filtering process. There I learned that we shouldn't pollute our rivers because if we do we can get cholera and get very sick. I also learned things from an animated movie we watched before we left. I realized that water is a valuable thing in our lives and we have a limited amount of it. I learned many things at the water plantation. I hope everyone did too.