My 8th grade class went to the Conodoguinet creek to test if there was any pollution in the creek water. Before we went my hypothesis was, “If we go to the Conodoguinet creek and test the water, then the creek will have little to any pollution in it because we haven’t had a monstrous storm in the past few months so there wouldn’t be an excessive amount of acid rainfall or runoff” There are three types of macroinvertebrates ( an invertebrate fauna - animal of a particular region - that can be captured by a soo - which is a certain net or sieve - ) that we were looking for, Group 1 ( which is pollution sensitive - they cannot have any pollution- ), Group 2 ( which is somewhat pollution tolerant - they can live with some pollution-) and Group …show more content…
phosphates and nitrates ) - which is when fertilizers < such as those on farms > can seep through the soil or even run down the soil - called runoff - into the creek causing the water to have more nutrients than it should. ) Depending on how much pollution there is depends on how much algae there is ( the more eutrophication -there is the more nutrients in the water- results in how much algae there will be.) We were also testing on the pH scale ( which measures the acidity or alkalinity of water ) goes from 0 - 14 where 6 - 0 is higher acidity and 8 - 14 is higher alkalinity ( alkalinity is what neutralizes/destroys acid. ) 7 on the pH scale is neutral and that is the ideal water for the ecosystem. The pollution that we were testing for is where the acid came from to begin with. Dissolved Oxygen is another thing we tested for, that 's how much oxygen gets mixed within the water ( Ex. rapids - the white part of the rapids is the oxygen mixing with the water- .) We also tested how fast the water was moving or the ( speed/velocity. ) We were going to test it by using a bamboo pole with a string ( with a certain length ) and a bobber on the end and see how long it takes for the bobber ( from its full length ) to hit the bamboo pole. To find the actual speed of the water you take the length of the string divided by the time ( sec/centi