Introduction

In this water lab, we sampled and analyzed two water sources, attempting to estimate the concentration of nitrate and phosphate in the water. One source was the Pomfret Brook and Putnam River. Nitrogen can enter the water through rainfall, plant residues, animal manures, and commercial fertilizers that run off into the water source. Many rocks have phosphorus in their chemical composition. Phosphate salts released from weathered rocks usually dissolve in water and will be absorbed by plants. Similar to nitrate, phosphate can also enter the water through fertilizer runoffs, since these nutrients are essential to plants growth and therefore are artificially added into fertilizers. Because both of these are water sources that the surrounding residents (Putnam residents and people who live on the campus of Pomfret School) use everyday for drinking, cooking, bathing and other daily necessities, we were predicting and hoping that there was going to be no nitrate and phosphate in the two water sources. However, the water at the Pomfret Brook might have some nitrate and phosphate due to the run off of fertilizer used on Pomfret campus. For the filtration component of the lab, we predicted that sand will filtrate better than gravel. This prediction was made based on the assumption that the particle size of sand is much smaller than that of gravel and thus can filter or hold on to more impurities in the water.

Procedure For the first part of the lab, we tested the waters for the presence and concentration phosphate and phosphate. First, we sampled a substantial amount of water from the Pomfret Brook water source. We then mixed the water with an indicator for phosphate that would change the waters color if phosphate was present in the water sample. Then, we put that mixture into a small vial, shook it vigorously then waited about four minutes for the color change. We then used the color scale which correlated each concentration of nitrate to a shade of blue color to see which color shade matched with that of our water sample. Finally, we recorded the concentration estimation. We repeated the same steps for nitrate, mixing the water with a nitrate color indicator. However, it seemed like the nitrate indicator did not work, since we later intentionally added nitrate to the water sample but the indicator did not react to the presence of nitrate. We then applied the whole process of estimating the concentration of phosphorus to the Putnam River water sample. In the second part of the lab, we picked two types of soil sand and

gravel then use those soils to filter water separately. The whole class filtered the water that had an initial 5 mg/L phosphate concentration. We divided the water sample into two half of equal volume, first half being filtered through sand and the other half being filtered through gravel. We re-tested the concentration of phosphate after two times of filtration.

Discussion:

First part of the lab: Our initial predictions were correct. There was no nitrate or phosphate in either of the water samples from Putnam River and Pomfret Brook. The addition of the indicators did not make either water samples change color, which shows that the concentrations for nitrate and phosphate are both 0mg/L. Nitrate and phosphate are toxic to human if consumed in large amount or over a long period of time, so testing for the presence of these chemicals is a good practice in order to see if the water is safe for use on human, crops, or animals. We would be really concerned if there is phosphate or nitrate present in either of the water source since humans and animals drink these water everyday. We should do an additional test for the presence of potassium or the oxidized form of elemental potassium. This is because potassium, nitrogen and phosphorus are the main components of commercial fertilizers (called NPK fertilizer) that can run off into the water source. Potassium is also toxic if we consume it in excessive amount.

Second part of the lab: We found out that our initial prediction was wrong. Gravel was a better soil type for filtration than sand. After two times of filtration, the concentration of phosphate of the sand-filtered water did not change (5 mg/L). However, gravel reduced the phosphate concentration in the water sample significantly, from 5 mg/L to 2 mg/L. After researching, we still could not find an answer for this phenomenon and therefore attribute the result we obtained to the errors we made during this experiment. Theoretically, sand should filter better than gravel since the particle size of gravel is too big. Gravel can only filter large or insoluble impurities in the water while does not filter soluble substances. For this reason, gravel filtration is the first level of filtration in most water filters.

One source of error in this lab can be the color scale, the scale only indicates a maximum concentration of 5mg/L so our results would be inaccurate if the concentration of phosphate in the water was above 5mg/L. Also, the difference between each concentration level in the scale was 1 mg/L, so our results only had one significant figure.