Summer SAVY Session 4, Day 4, Planning for the Future
Day 4: Today in Planning for the Future, students explored oil spills through the lens of percent change. We looked at how researchers can use a measurement of the concentration of oil in a sample of ocean water to estimate the size of an oil spill or how widely the spill has already spread. Students examined a handful of methods for cleaning oil spills and used percent decrease to calculate how much oil each method could effectively clean up. We also looked at trends in both the number and size of oil spills to practice calculating the percent increase and decrease over the last few decades.
After lunch, students conducted an experiment to learn how oil interacts with pure water compared to water containing different contaminants. We learned that in pure water, the oil will separate and form a layer on top of the water. But when other contaminants like detergent have polluted the water, oil can mix with those contaminants and make it much more difficult to clean up.
