Water Turbidity #11

Today, we finished up the last presentation. Overall, this experience has been several things. Extremely boring, is the first that comes to mind. Watching hour after hour of presentation while having to take notes at the speed of light wasn't the funnest thing. But, on the bright side, I learned a lot about different aspects of water and really got an appreciation of it. I also learned a lot of useful things that will help me when doing tests on water and such, and I know how different things effect water. Anyways, I'm glad that I learned all of these things, but also a little disappointed of them method, but maybe, it was necessary.

Water Turbidity #10

Today, we also had presentations. It was pretty brutal watching all the presentations and being enslaved to taking notes. One that I thought was pretty cool was Water Hardness by Emlyn, Alec, and Marissa. I went into the presentation knowing nothing about water hardness (I thought it was like ice, lol) and came out knowing a whole lot. I found that general hardness (GH) is the number of divalent cations (minerals that have lost 2 electrons) dissolved in the water. And the water usually contains calcium or magnesium if it is hard.

Water Turbidity #9

Well i guess this isn't really about water turbidity, but it has to do with the project. Today we watched presentations. These presentations were really interesting, one that I thought was really good was pH, by Danielle, Kerstin and Coco. This presentation taught me a lot about something that I knew absolutely nothing about. I learned that pH literally stands for potential of hydrogen. It basically means the acidity of water. pH varies in levels between 0 and 14. 0-6.9 is acid. 7 is neutral and 7.1-14 is alkaline.

Water Turbidity #8

After being very sick this week, I decided to go to school even though I was still a bit sick. I did this because I didnt want to get too behind is school (or as Anne put it so brilliantly, my momma made me booted me out of the house). Oh lol. LOL! Anyways, we had to present today. I had a cornucopia of material to cover with only bullet points to refference. LUCKILY, I had learned enough in my research to ensure that my preparation and overall success. I think my group did pretty good and I'm proud of us (well mainly them, because I was sick, but me too for doing a good job when it counted most) and my main regret is that I was sick and could not of contributed more to my group. However, I feel that this should be taken into consideration before giving me a bad grade for lack of participation.

Love,
Andrew

Water Turbidity #7

Date:10/8/07
URL:http://www.scc.rutgers.edu/coastweb/NYCDEPHarbor_survey/docs/water_clarity/secch.htm
Title: Secchi Depth
Today I thought I would revisit the "Secchi Depth" device. I found that secchi depth recording of 5 ft means that it was last visible at five feet below the surface. A higher recording means that the water is clearer and a lower recording means that the water is more turbid. Clearer water allows sunlight to go deep and turbid water does not. This can "[reduce] biological reaeration at lower depths."

Water Turbidity #6

Date:10/7/07
URL:http://waterontheweb.org/under/waterquality/turbidity.html
Title: Water on the Web
Alright, for like the fifth time I am going to be talking about this website. I am doing it in so many posts because it covers so much and I feel like one post would be unworthy. But, on my next post I am going to branch out and cover a different source. So anyways, I found that turbidity can have negative effects on water. "Particulates also provide attachment sites for heavy metals such as cadmium, mercury and lead, and many toxic organic contaminants such as PCBs, PAHs and many pesticides." I thought that was pretty interestnig because my Beyond the Border topic is pesticides effect on the environment and this shows that water turbidity and pesticides in water are sometimes related.

Water Turbidity #5

Date:10/6/07
URL:http://waterontheweb.org/under/waterquality/turbidity.html
Title: Water on the Web
Today I am going to continue to chip away at the site I found. There was a really helpful table that showed the effects of turbidity on fresh water fish. This graph really helped me understand how turbidity can effect fish in relation to time and the level of turbidity.

Water Turbidity #4

Date:10/5/07
URL:http://waterontheweb.org/under/waterquality/turbidity.html
Title: Water on the Web
Today I found an amazing source on water turbidity. There is so much information on this site that it wouldn't be beneficial to try to cover it all on one post and I'm sure that I will be able to post more on it in the future. So for today's post I will be covering the section entitled "Why Is it Important?". This section explained what exactly water turbidity is, some of its causes, and some of its effects. I found that water turbidity is measured by the murkiness caused by the amount of total suspended solids (or TSS) in the water. I also found that "The major source of turbidity in the open water zone of most lakes is typically phytoplankton, but closer to shore, particulates may also be clays and silts from shoreline erosion."

Water Turbidity #3

Today we went to Balboa Park. It was a lot of fun and also very interesting. We learned about Copper and the Mayas. You're probably asking "how does this relate to water turbidity???" Well we conducted a brief study on water and we used a small circle divided into 2 black and 2 white quarters. The easier you could see it, the lower the turbidity. Now upon further research I found that this circle is called a "Secchi Depth".

Water Turbidity #1

Well, my group wanted to do our project on what would happen if there was no water, BUT, since my group stalled on turning in our slip, we didnt get our first two choices. Instead, we got "water turbidity". Now my initial reaction was something like "IN WHAT THE HECK IS WATER TURBIDITY?!?!". SOOO it seemed pretty reasonable for me to check it out and post about what it is. Well, in case you didnt know, water turbidity is made up of two words. WATER and TURBIDITY. Now, I have a pretty good idea of what water is (and I hope you do two, you drink about eight glasses of it a day). So let's talk about turbidity. It is defined as "not clear or transparent because of stirred-up sediment or the like; clouded; opaque; obscured: the turbid waters near the waterfall." (dictionary.com). Basically, that means that turbidity is how dirty or unclear water is. The more turbidity the water has, the cloudier it is.

Beyond the Border #17

Today was a very intersting day. Our class was given a presentation by Officer Moffit who worked as a Border Patrol Officer. I found this extremely engaging. We've been spending all this time talking about Mexico and the border, so it was really captivating to finally see someone who actually worked on the border and basically did the dirty work that keeps the border controlled. I thought that his job seemed really interesting and it must be pretty crazy working there.

Beyond the Border #16

Over the weekend, I spent friday at the LAN, saturday sleeping and recovering from the LAN. But, I did manage to spend some time researching pesticides on Sunday. I also checked out RG's blog. One post that interested me had the source of a website on pesticides. RG titled the post "Websites on Agricultural Chemicals". The website that I decided to check out was http://msucares.com/pubs/publications/p1962.htm. This was really a great website that not only included information on pesticides, but also included benefits and risks.