Blessed Sacrament School students participate in The Global Water Experiment
Blessed Sacrament School students participate in The Global Water Experiment
Local students were the first in the Southeast to take part in international project that includes global water quality map.
(SAVANNAH, Ga.) – Students in the Blessed Sacrament School Science Club were the first group in the Southeast United States to contribute to The Global Water Experiment, an international project.
The United Nations has declared 2011 the International Year of Chemistry. School students around the world were encouraged to explore one of Earth's most critical resources, water. The results of their investigations will contribute to the Global Water Experiment, which will possibly become the biggest chemistry experiment ever.
In The Global Water Experiment, students are to investigate the quality of the water in their local surrounding and share this with the world. The international year of chemistry is an initiative of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry and of UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
The Blessed Sacrament Science Club participated in the international water quality experiment and shared their results with others throughout the world at the end of the school year. BSS middle school students got water samples from several local watersheds and water types, including Tybee Island, Skidaway River, Forest and the Savannah River.
The BSS students were the first group in the southeast United States to contribute to the global experiment and one of only about 20 groups in the U.S. to participate in the exercise to date, said BSS Science Club facilitator Will Lynch, Ph.D. The students learned the importance of water quality and acid-base chemistry in their lives and environment.
They tested the water during their Science Club meeting, where they learned about pH and the pH scale through a variety of techniques including indicators, pH paper and also via electrochemical analysis. After discovering pH and discussing its relationship to aqueous environments and life, the students determined their sample pH by these techniques and pooled their data. After testing samples, their data was uploaded to the website below to be part of the collective data from other students from around the world.
“One reason the students were excited to perform this experiment was so they could feel a sense of contribution to a greater effort with peer students from around the world,” Lynch said. “There are groups of students from six different continents working on the same project, including students from Georgia (the country), England, South Africa, Argentina and Australia, all monitoring the most important natural resource on Earth — water. This gave the students a real sense of pride that they have contributed to the universal water quality initiative.”
Blessed Sacrament School was founded in 1939 with two classrooms and three sisters of Mercy as the first faculty. Today there are two sections of each grade level from Pre-K through 8th grades with a current enrollment of approximately 425 students. The school offers a rigorous, faith-based academic program and maintains small class sizes. Blessed Sacrament is part of the Catholic Diocese of Savannah and has received accreditation by both SACS (Southern Association of Colleges and Schools) and FCC (Florida Catholic Conference).
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About the International Year of Chemistry 2011 and The Global Water Experiment http://water.chemistry2011.org/web/iyc
The global experiment is an initiative of the IUPAC Committee on Chemistry Education and has been developed to appeal to students from primary school to senior high school. The activities that make up the experiment will help students appreciate the role of chemistry in issues of water quality and purification. At the same time, students will contribute to an online global map, reporting on their investigations of water quality and water treatment.
The Global Experiment directly addresses the IYC goal of "Increasing the public appreciation and understanding of chemistry in meeting world needs and encouraging interest in chemistry among young people." The central theme of the experiment will be Water: A Chemical Solution. will provide an outstanding educational opportunity to learn about water and the challenge of meeting the Millenium Development Goal of greatly improving access to safe drinking water before 2015. This activity will be used to emphasize the close relationship between water and climate change, human health, and energy security.
