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A Study Representing The Relationship Between Ph And Distance From The Shoreline

1445 Words6 Pages

James Jackson, Chris Cardillo, Morgan Searing
James and Yeajin (11:15 T)

A Study Representing the Relationship Between pH and Distance From the Shoreline

Introduction: One of the primary measures of water quality is pH level. It tells the degree to which something—usually soil, water, or a solution—is basic or acidic (University of California, 2012). Before conducting the study, we learned that more acidic bodies of water have lower levels of carbon dioxide. Therefore, bodies of water with a highly acidic pH are not good habitats for aquatic organisms. However, a very basic pH level can be harmful to aquatic life as well. A pH of around 6.5-9 is optimal for most aquatic organisms (University of California, 2012).
After learning about the …show more content…

We used the shoreline as the control for our experiment. Our independent variable was the distance from the shoreline, and the dependent variable was the pH level. In general, we expected the pH to increase slightly as we moved away from the shoreline; however, we expected the pH to plateau, or stop increasing, at some point around 8 or 9. We did not expect Lake Herrick to have extremely basic or extremely acidic water quality, but we expected it to be semi-neutral. A neutral pH for a lake would be indicative of moderately healthy and sustainable water (Encyclopedia Brittanica, …show more content…

The data we collected confirmed our hypothesis that pH increases slightly along with distance from the shoreline. The control of our experiment, or the water at the far end of the bridge, measured a pH of about 6.0. We determined this to be a relatively neutral pH level. As we expected, the pH level gradually increased as we moved further from the shoreline. The change was very subtle but still evident. The pH steadily increased by about .5, until it plateaued around 7.5 or 8.0. We concluded that most of the data suggests a neutral pH for Lake Herrick. The pH level likely plateaued because Lake Herrick possesses a relatively high quality of water.
We provided a visual to represent the gradual increase of pH as we move away from the shoreline (See Figure 1 in Tables & Figures). The bar graph represents how our independent variable, distance from shoreline, influences the pH level. The scale of our graph for pH levels is .5, because this was the most consistent change we noticed in our data. Our data was gathered in an organized fashion. From this experiment, we can gather that the pelagic water in Lake Herrick has a higher, more basic, pH level than the littoral

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