Pollution in Austin

Grant

Budget: $3404.00

Proposal Summary

This project will not only give the students an opportunity to become active participants in the preservation of Austin’s ecological systems, but they will also have access to city officials and specialists.  Our goal is to bridge the gap between students and interested experts and local leaders.  Using the equipment we will purchase from this grant, we want to take the students out to the field to test the quality of the water and the biotic organisms living in the greater Austin area.  We will then organize meetings with local experts and city officials of the findings and work together to protect the local ecosystems.

             Students will gain an understanding of scientific practices first and foremost.  By teaching them these methods, they will be learning problem solving strategies that they will be able to use into their adult lives.  Secondly, the students will become an active voice in the community.  An oral presentation along with a computer presentation will be presented to the students’ peers, local experts, and community leaders and will be archived each year, forming a bank of information on local ecology for years to come.

Description

Whatever the discipline, student work on this project will follow the same basic outline.  They will engineer and perform projects, obtaining data on different types of pollution in Austin.  They will then analyze their data to see if a conclusion can be made.  Lastly, they’ll present their findings to their peers, local scientists, and community leaders.  Students will decide what community leaders would have an interest and must be contacted.  These leaders and experts will be invited to view the presentations and assess the students’ results.

The chemistry portion of this project includes a focus on experimentation in order to make conclusions and present findings.  Students will likely choose water pollution as their experimental focus due to the proximity of Edwards Aquifer. They will use computers owned by the school along with water monitoring kits to test the eight basic water quality parameters of water quality. Students may focus on pollution in Waller Creek, Town Lake, or the Colorado River, measuring coliform, dissolved oxygen, biochemical oxygen demand, nitrate, pH, phosphate, temperature, and turbidity. Students may also focus on air pollution. We have contacts at UT that will allow our students to use GC and HPLC machines for analysis along with the Vernier probes.

Biology students will probably also focus on water or air pollution, but from the perspective of its effects on living organisms.  They may choose to monitor the organisms living in a particular environment, measure bacteria at drainage sites, or perform laboratory experiments to determine the sensitivity of plants or insects to different types and levels of pollution (for example, less light due to air pollution).  They could also make use of the Green low cost water monitoring kits, Vernier probes, spectrophotometers (to measure and compare bacteria levels), microscopes, and a supply of plants or insects with which to experiment.

There are some difficulties this project will face. One problem is that data collection may have to occur outside of school time. This could be difficult for students who do extracurricular activities or work outside of school time. We will work with these students to help them find time.

Rationale

When gazing at the beautiful Austin skyline, a cloudy haze often mars the view, and when kayaking in the city’s Town Lake, litter often lines the banks. While Austin is seen as progressive in terms of environmental issues, the city has not met clean air standards for some time.  Most recently, the city introduced new vehicle inspection requirements to limit exhaust in passenger cars and introducing cleaner burning fuel to public transportation.  Even with these adjustments, Austin must make additional changes in order to comply with federal standards.  Likewise, Austin’s water resources are in trouble.  Draught and pollution have altered creeks, Town Lake, and the Edwards Aquifer. More work can and must be done in order to return to the clean Austin that once thrived. 

Many organizations exist to deal with pollution, such as Adopt-a-highway, the Austin Youth River Watch, and Save our Springs, all of which attempt to meet different needs.  However, none of these link high school students to community leaders in a way to effect change in Austin.  Our project seeks to bridge that gap.  Students will be given the opportunity to pursue knowledge by a path they have chosen and will be provided an outlet to share their new-found knowledge with their peers and interested experts and local leaders.

 The goal is not to eradicate the problem of pollution but to improve communication between students and local authorities about pollutants in Austin and what could be done to limit their effects.  Students will gain a scientist’s perspective of the exploratory and collaborative nature of science, and they may have an effect on local policy-making.  Some students may become involved in one or both of these fields as a result of this project and do so with the understanding of how the two communities can cooperate.

Potential Impact

The goals of this project are many. We would like students to experiment with experimental design so they gain a full understanding of how experiments work. This would include finding a question to answer within the topics of chemistry, biology, and pollution, figuring out an experiment that will collect the data necessary to answer the question, and then actually collecting data in a scientific way. Students will then need to analyze the data to come to some valuable conclusions. These milestones create points in the project where the teachers can measure the progress of the project.

            The final goal of this project is the interaction with community leaders. An oral presentation along with a computer presentation will be presented to peers, teachers, environmental organizations, and community leaders. Presentations will be archived each year, forming a bank of data on Austin’s pollution throughout the years. We believe bringing together environmental organizations and civil leaders along with our students’ data will fill the gap that currently exists between environmental organizations and those in power to make legislation. 

            Two chemistry teachers, one biology teacher, and approximately eighty students will benefit from this experience the first year. Students will gain hands-on experience in science experimental design and data collection. They will also gain confidence in themselves as they present real data to community leaders.

Evaluation Plan

            The success of this project does not depend on the students’ successes in their own chosen experiments.  Students will gain an understanding of scientific practices first and foremost.  Their personal work will be evaluated based on milestone assignments and their final presentation.  They will be able to present their information in poster form or as part of a permanent website, available for use by all students, scientific experts and amateurs, and local policy makers.  The project’s success as a whole will be based on how it meets our goals: to improve communication between science students and community leaders about pollution and to spark students’ interests in science and government. 

            It is our hope that a dialogue will be established between these students and their representatives.  At the very least students will be able to express their concerns about pollution, and at the very most, students may discover something helpful or yet unknown in the fight against pollution.  If these community leaders, after the first year of projects, express an interest in meeting with students again next year, we will know we have succeeded. 

            Another important goal is that of student interest.  By working as a scientist to explore a hypothesis, students will gain a more realistic impression of what research scientists actually do on a day-to-day basis.  They will also have the opportunity to meet with local scientists to receive their feedback.  Additionally, students will work within the political system to try to make an impact on decision-making.  In doing so, they may also gain an interest in work in that field.  Students will be exposed to two career paths they might not have considered or understood previously.  This project hopes to foster interest in both fields, so that students will feel comfortable in the role of scientist, community leader, or both.

Project Calendars

Chemistry:

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
Properties of Solutions – formation, water as a solvent (CaCO3 and Hard water)	Solubility – factors affecting (fertilizer runoff)	Solution Lab – “Factors Affecting Solution Formation”	Solubility – Henry’s law (mineral deposits)	Solubility – supersaturation – “Supersaturation”
discussion of pollution with respect to solutions, intro to pollution project	Molarity – intro, making dilutions (pollution project)	Molarity – percent solutions (pollution project)	Colligative Properties – vapor pressure, Boil point and Freeze point	Colligative Properties – molality and mole fraction
Intro to Gases – properties	Boyle’s Law “Pressure-Volume Lab”	Gas Pressure	Charles Law “Temperature-Volume relation Lab”	Combined gas Law
Ideal gas law Introduction	Ideal Gas Law	Dalton’s law	Graham’s Law Diffusion of Gases Lab	Pollution discussion with respect to gases – Students choose project idea
Students will design experiments to test the pollution levels around Austin – They will then draw these ideas out and present them to the class	Lab day	Lab day	Presentations	Presentations

Biology

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
Metabolic processes	Metabolic processes	Ecosystems	Food webs, mineral cycles	Tolerance and adaptation (related to pollution, especially) Introduce/ explain presentations
Organism interactions: (parasitism, commensalisms, symbiosis, etc.)	Present project ideas, get peer and teacher feedback	Begin gathering supplies, discuss ideas as class, how they address pollution	Lab Day	Resource availability
Plant types and major parts: root, stem, leaf	Lab Day	Flower parts lab	Plant respiration, photosynthesis	Plant vascular system
Plant vascular system	Lab Day	Plant reproduction	Plant reproduction	Plant adaptation lab
Plants and environments	Lab Day	Lab Day	Presentations	Presentations

SOS Alliance. 2004. 8 Nov. 2006. www.sosalliance.org

            This website provides information about the Save Our Springs Alliance in Austin, TX which works to preserve the quality of the water and the wildlife of the Edward's aquifer.  It provides government contacts and scientific studies that students can reference during their own investigations of water quality.  The site has a slight bias since it works to preserve water quality in the central Texas area.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 16 Nov 2006.  18 Nov. 2006.  http://www.epa.gov/waterscience/

This is a governmental website that covers many areas of water science.  It provides articles, information, and databases that students could use when researching areas of environmental protection around the country.

National Resources Defence Council. 8 Nov. 2006.  http://www.nrdc.org/health/effects/default.asp

This National Resources Defence Council is an effective environmental action organization.  Their website provides general information about environmental protection that the students can access but there are also links to articles regarding the health effects of contamination and pollution.

Budget

Item Description	Unit Price	Quantity	Total	Availability
Green low cost water monitoring kit	$29.95	10	$299.50
Microscopes	$212.00	10	$2,120.00	In Kind
Spectrophotometer	$840.00	1	$840.00
Vernier Logger Pro	$159.00	1	$159.00
Vernier LabPro	$220.00	5	$1,100.00
Vernier CO2 gas sensor	$249.00	3	$747.00
Vernier O2 gas sensor	$186.00	3	$558.00
Computers	$500.00	5	$2,500.00	In Kind
		Sub-total	$8,024.00
		In Kind	$4,620.00
		Total	$3,404.00