Since , Adrian College faculty and student teachers have been offering in-depth, hands-on water quality lessons for area youth. Youth who participate in this type of program help develop confidence to successfully develop bioengineering solutions needed to water challenges of the future. For more information about programs that inspire new understanding and appreciation for soil and the services they provide, visit the Soil Science Society of America webpage or the Michigan State University Extension webpage.
This article was published by Michigan State University Extension. Want clean water? Compare how fast the aquifer grows in the three containers. You poured the same amount of water on the three soil containers. Do you think that if you wait long enough, the three aquifers will eventually hold the same amount of water or will one hold more than another? Why do you think this is the case? In a moment you will or a helper an adult to unscrew the bottles and collect the water gathered in the aquifer in the glasses.
Would any pollutants get stuck in the dirt and thus be filtered out? Now, unscrew or ask an adult helper to unscrew the bottle cap at the bottom of the corn kernel only soil container. Pay attention; your aquifer will instantly deplete. Ask the adult to collect as much of the water as possible in the tall glass on which the container was resting.
When done, replace the unscrewed container on the tall glass so more water can drip out. Note some corn kernels might drip out; this is fine. Now repeat or ask an adult helper to repeat the previous step for the other two containers.
Taste the original dirty water and the post-filtered water. Does it taste different? Look carefully at the bottom of the glasses for signs of black pepper. Extra : Let your bottles drain over a longer period of time. Would this imply that some types of soils retain more water than others? Extra: Try a thicker layer of soil.
Would a thicker layer of soil be able to filter out more pollutants? Extra: Repeat the activity with gravel, sand and clay. Wash the gravel before you start, but definitively do not taste the water collected in the glasses! Build a Cooler. Get smart. Sign up for our email newsletter. Sign Up. Support science journalism. Sign in. Menu Products. Products Menu. Product category. Water purification by filtration Clean water is an increasingly scarce resource.
Soil purification Soil remediation is a process where the contaminated soil is either removed or purified using different means. Visit our other sites. Biolin Scientific China For our Chinese friends.
German Webshop Deliveries are only possible within Germany. Children can get incredibly filthy playing in the dirt, but a well-functioning soil is a powerful physical, chemical and biological reactor that cleans the water moving through it.
Most people recognize the soil as an effective filter. Just like the filter in an air conditioner filters dust in the air, soil contains a matrix of pores of different sizes that can physically filter particles out of water. The real effect of soil, however, is not physical filtering. Most important are the chemical and biological reactions that the soil promotes to remove pollutants and impurities from water.
Biological cleaning by soil One gram of soil holds one billion or more microbes that Mother Nature uses to cycle organic and inorganic materials. For example, fungi and bacteria decompose organic matter that enters the soil in leachate from plants and animals. Not all soil organisms participate in these reactions, so the removal of organic pollutants can take some time.
Populations of microbes capable of decomposition need to build to suitable levels to be effective or appropriate enzymes that aid the breakdown must become active. Thus, some organic pollutants are more resistant to decomposition than others depending on their chemical structure.
For example, organochloride pesticides tend to be more resistant to degradation by microbes than are the organophosphates. Soil microbes work not only on organic chemicals in the water, but also on inorganic components.
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