Oil Spill CleanupLog Book

How do oil and oil dispersants affect the

capillary action of plants?

Safety

We obtained an MSDS sheet for the oil and detergent we used.Stihl 2 Cycle Oil: https://www.stihlusa.com/WebContent/CMSFileLibrary/MSDS/STIHL2CYHP.pdfDawn Dish Soap:https://msdsdigital.com/dawn-dish-soap-msds

We had an adult cut the celery stalks for us. We also had an adult measure and handle the motor oil for us. We kept the samples in a safe place under adult supervision at all times. An adult disposed of the samples in a sealed trash container.

Daily LogOur project was intended to be a physical project at the fair. We put together this e-fair presentation using the pictures and writings we had already done that we had with us when school went virtual. Unfortunately, our physical student log book, full of student drawings, writings and work…is at our school and inaccessible to us. We put this log together based on her notes, our notes and class contributions on our TEAMS platform.

9/10/19 Where does our electricity come from? We drew diagrams showing how we think power gets to a lamp plugged into an outlet in our classroom. Our ideas were all over the place! Some showed power being collected from lightning bolts. Some showed plugs going into the ground. Some showed sun, wind or coal. It was pretty clear we really didn’t know where it started or really, how it got to us.

We started at the lamp and traced the wire to the outlet. Our teacher showed us where the outlet had a wire running to it through a tube attached to the wall. Once we noticed the tubes, we could see them running along baseboards and up walls all around the room. She explained that we usually can’t see these wires because they are usually behind the walls. Our school was built before electricity was used widely, so the wiring was added later, on the outside of the walls.

We took a walking tour of the school grounds to see if we could see where the wires come into the building. We found it! The wires were attached to a pole in the alley that connected to pole after pole after pole going down the alley. Wires ran from the poles to all the houses and businesses. We noticed there were two or three wires on some of the poles. If one carried electricity, what could the others be?

9/16/19 We talked about why the poles are called “telephone poles”. That gave us a clue to what one of the wires was: telephone land lines. We finally figured out that the 3rd wire had to be cable wire. It was strange to notice all the wires in our world. We did an observation as we rode home and to school in and around our neighborhoods just noticing how many wires there were. Some neighborhoods have buried their wires, so they don’t show. But in most of the city, wires connect everything. That made us wonder about cell phones and iPads that do not use wires. What about wireless?

9/24/19 We made another drawing to show where we think the internet comes from. Most of us thought it was beamed in from satellites in space. Our teacher pointed out to us our wireless router in the classroom, and showed us the internet interface box. She explained that the router is connected into the internet and broadcasts a wireless signal to our iPads. We mostly never had noticed the little box on the ceiling. We thought before it was an alarm system or something. We had no idea our internet was coming from it!

We also thought about cell phones. We had all seen cell towers and seen situations in real life or on TV where people could not “get a signal”. That helped us understand that the cell towers are also hooked into a wired system and broadcast a wireless signal to a small area. They cover more space than our wireless router, but they also have limits.

Then our minds were completely blown when our teacher showed us a video that showed an interactive map of the actual internet. Wires across every country, and even under the ocean. The internet is for real a web of wires that covers the whole earth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKHZKTRyzeg Animated Map Reveals the 550,000 miles of cable hidden under the ocean that power the internet

https://theconversation.com/in-our-wi-fi-world-the-internet-still-depends-on-undersea-cables-49936

10/8/19 So what, exactly is wireless? We found out it is all LIGHT! Today we explored the electromagnetic spectrum. We learned that light has a potentially infinite number of different wave lengths. Each wave length has more or less ability to penetrate matter, and each length represents a different color. We learned how different wave lengths are used in different technologies like infrared remote controls, microwaves and x rays. Only a small fraction of the spectrum are colors we can see. There are a huge number of colors of light that our eyes have never and can never see.

https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/heo/scan/spectrum/txt_electromagnetic_spectrum.html Electromagnetic Spectrum

10/8/19 We learned tht the colors we can see are the visible spectrum of light, and we usually think of them as a rainbow. We experimented with making rainbows outside using prisms and mirrors to play with how light moves, bends, relects and refracts. We finally understood why rainbows show colors in the order they do. They are arranged by wavelength, with the longest (red) waves wrapping around the longest part of the bow.

Our prism rainbows were straight, but the rainbows in the sky are curved. We used straight prisms, but the earth’s atmosphere is curved! We also figured out that a double rainbow is a mirror reflection of the first rainbow. That’s why the colors are reversed on the outer rainbow. We loved looking at the picture our teacher captured in Colorado that shows the end of the rainbow! You can actually see the colored light touching the trees and grass! No pot of gold, though!

We learned how our eyes perceive colors, and that when we see all colors of light at the same time, we perceive the color white. Black is perceived when no light is reflected. Every object absorbs some wavelengths of the spectrum and reflects others. We see only the colors reflected to our eyes. Dark colors absorb more light waves than light colors. That is probably why we tend to wear dark colors in the winter and lighter colors in warm weather. The dark colors absorb more light, and light is a form of heat energy.

10/15/19 We spent some time today experimenting with different frequencies and wavelengths of light and learning how different wave lengths are used in technology. https://phet.colorado.edu/sims/html/wave-on-a-string/latest/wave-on-a-string_en.html Wave on a String

We also saw a video about light speed. We learned that light speed is a constant in the universe, the fastest anything can go. It’s blindingly fast: 186,000 miles per second. Even so, we learned that space is so big, it takes many millions of years for light to travel to us from distant stars. We also learned that if we could travel near the speed of light, time really does slow down…but only for the people travelling. Many decades of earth time could pass during a journey of a few minutes near light speed. Light is amazing!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNggAKfbULs Cosmos 8 Travels in Space and Time

10/22/19 We learned today about electric power plants. These are the places our electricity is generated. Although we WISHED they ran on sun or wind, we found out about 80% of our electricity comes from burning coal. We saw a video about how power plants work and looked a picture and information about the power plant that generates the electricity we use in the city, The Meremec Power Plant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GI7AhajfhWE How Power Plants Work

https://www.gem.wiki/Meramec_Power_Plant Meramec Power Plant

On the Meramec Power Plant picture, we traced the coal train arriving at the plant. It was over 100 cars long. We could all remember being stopped at train tracks and waiting for trains like this that seemed to go on forever. The power plant uses an enormous amount of coal, and we learned that the pollution from the plant is enormous. It emits nearly 7 million tons of Carbon Dioxide yearly, which is a huge contributor to Global Warming. The particulates coming from burning the coal also can be traced to about 60 deaths and over 1000 serious health issues including heart disease and respiratory problems just in our area. Burning coal is very bad for people’s health and for the environment.

So where does coal come from? Mostly surface mining. We thought we hated coal before. When we saw what the mining looks like, we were horrified. We browsed through google images for coal surface mining: Here is one of them:

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/25072018/appalachia-mountaintop-removal-coal-strip-mining-satellite-maps-environmental-impacts-data

10/28/19 Today we learned that coal is one of a group of fossil fuels. There is a solid, liquid and gas form of organic matter that has decomposed over millions of years. The solid form is coal. The gas form is natural gas and the liquid form is oil. All these are used as fuels for different reasons. Coal is used mainly for electricity generation. Gas is used for cooking and heating buildings. Oil is used to make plastic and gasoline. We use a LOT of all of these things!!

11/5/19 Today we learned that fossil fuels are all made from things that were once alive, so they all contain carbon, which is the main building block for all living things on earth. When fossil fuels are burned, carbon is released. Our teacher heated a metal ball in a wax candle made from organic material. It became covered with a black powder. The powder did not come from the ball. It came from the WHITE candle! The powder was carbon.

We learned there are problems with getting and using all of the different kinds of fossil fuels. All of the ways we obtain fossil fuels are destructive to the environment.

Getting natural gas is done by fracking, which causes earthquakes! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io8o2nTXhb0 What is Fracking Brainstuff. Also transporting it through pipes or trains can cause huge explosions.

Oil is hard to obtain in some countries, but some have a lot. This can make oil a source of war. Where it is hard to obtain, it is drilled from under the ocean, by fracking, or squeezed out of sand. Oil spills destroy the environment when they happen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SakDOUlDWDs The Oil Spill

Burning these fuels is also destructive to the earth, because carbon in the atmosphere becomes Carbon Dioxide (CO2), and is causing global warming which leads to climate change, polar ice melt, sea level rise and stronger and more frequent storms.

11/18/19 Today we learned more about the effect of adding CO2 to the atmosphere. We learned that Carbon Dioxide is necessary for life. It’s how we breathe, and what plants use to make food. It forms kind of like a blanket around the earth that holds in the heat of the earth so it does not all escape to space. We could not live without some CO2.

We also learned that earth’s systems generate CO2. Everything from breathing to volcanic eruptions put CO2 into the earth’s system. However, humans add billions of tons of CO2 that is not part of any natural system. Adding more CO2 is like adding extra blankets. One blanket may make you feel warm. Several blankets may start making you hot. Adding CO2 means adding heat. Adding heat to any system adds energy. The result is that the energy has to go somewhere: stronger wind, stronger waves, warmer air, water, melting ice. These are all problems we are beginning to see in our world.

We also learned that there were other times in earth’s history when the CO2 levels got really high. These were in the Permian and Cretaceous Periods of earth, millions of years ago. Both of them ended with mass extinctions. The Permian extinction ended the age of giant amphibians. The Cretaceous extinction ended the dinosaurs. That should really make us think.

Oil refinery making oil into gasoline in Roxanna, Illinois near St. Louis…

Oil arrives here through long pipelines that run underground all across North America. It is stored here in large tanks underground, and shipped out on trains and trucks.

12/6/19 Today we saw a video of Greta Thunberg speaking at the United Nations about Climate Change. We were amazed that a young person just a little older than us was out there making a difference and being listened to by leaders from all over the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml3f0KeZnsY Greta Thunberg COP25 High Level Event on climate Emergency

Picture courtesy of https://newrepublic.com/article/156101/passion-greta-thunberg

We studied the UN Climate Change Report she talked about.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQpIVsxx014 UN Report Warns on the Impacts of Climate Change

We also learned today about some new technologies that can give us new ways to produce energy that do not harm the earth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uStFvcz9Or4 Top 10 Energy sources of the Future

1/14/20 Today we discussed ideas for further study. We tried to decide which aspect of all that we learned about energy we wanted to know more about. After a lot of talking, thinking and voting, we decided we really wanted to know more about oil spills and how they can be cleaned up.

1/21/20 Today we began researching oil spills to find out more about them. A lot of our research led us to the Deep Water Horizon disaster. It was the largest marine oil spill in history, and it went on for a long time. A well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico broke and oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico for weeks. Oil washed into the marshes and beaches along the Gulf coast of the U.S. These wetlands protect the United States gulf coastline from storms and filter pollutants from the water coming from the Mississippi River and other rivers before it reaches the ocean. We learned that in addition to the oil spilled, a lot of dispersant called Corexit was used to clean up the spill. We found out that Corexit contains ingredients found in many household cleaners and detergents like baby bath and shampoo. We saw that after the oil spill, most of the marshlands were dead. That made us want to know what the oil spill did to kill the plants.

1/28/20 We wanted to know how plants take up water so we could understand what oil does to that process. We learned that plants take up water by a process called capillary action. They depend on the surface tension of water to move water through their tissue.We did some activities to see how capillary action and surface tension work:

In this observation we watched capillaries in a paper towel fill and surface tension pull liquid from one cup to another as the liquid moved up the paper towel. This is the same way plants do it!

The part that amazed us was that the plant is not pushing up the water from the roots. It is evaporation from the leaves that pulls water up through the plant.

We played around with air pressure, surface tension and capillary action using straws and cups of water. We raced to see which group could fill their empty cup first!

We designed this experiment to see how the marsh plants are affected by oil spills and cleanup. We wanted to find out if the dispersants really help clean the water for the plants, and how much oil affects plants when they are growing in the water.

We learned that dispersants are detergents that work by breaking water’s surface tension. That was concerning to us, since we learned surface tension was important for capillary action. This project is important because it tests how oil and dispersants affect a plant’s ability to take up water. This is very important for understanding how to best deal with oil spills in the future, especially when they are near coastlines.

We will measure how capillary action is affected by comparing the distance dyed water is able to move up each stalk in 24 hours.

2/4/20 Today we constructed our testable question, made our prediction, and identified our variables:

Testable QuestionWill the presence of oil, dispersant, or oil and dispersant affect the amount of time it takes for water to be taken up by a celery cutting?

We also made our prediction:Prediction

We predict that the oil will have the strongest negative effect on the capillary action because we think the oil will make the water thicker and harder for the plant to absorb.

We identified our variables:Constant Conditions

Independent Variables : the presence of oil, dispersant, and oil combined with a dispersant in the water supply.

Dependent Variable : the time it takes the water to rise to the top of the celery through their capillaries.

Control : We used plain colored water with no oil or dispersant as a control.

Constant Conditions: the amount and temperature of the water, the size and shape of containers, the size of the celery stalks, the amount of detergent, food coloring and oil added to each sample, and the temperature of the room.

2/11/20 We made rough drafts of our procedure and tested them out with each other. We finalized our procedure and began collecting the materials we would need to run our experiment.

2/18/20 Today we ran our experiment! We used 3 samples for each of the conditions we tested for this experiment

Our experiment:1. Have an adult cut 12 fresh celery stalks with leaves into equal lengths about 10cm.

long. Cut from the non-leafy end, and keep the stalk lengths equal to the joint where the leaves sprout)

2. Measure 70 ml. of water into 12 identical cups. We used 266 ml. plastic cups.

3. Add 15 drops of red food coloring to each cup.

4. Have an adult measure 20 ml. of motor oil into 6 of the cups. We used 2-cycle oil.

5. Measure 10 ml. of liquid dish detergent into 3 of the cups with oil and 3 of the cups with plain water.

6. Place a stalk of celery in all of the cups. Mark the time they were set up.

7. After 24 hours, measure how far the red dye has travelled up the celery stalk for each sample.

Materials: 12 identical containers:

We used 266 ml. plastic cups

Water red food coloring, 12 stalks of celery Knife 2-cycle oil

An adult to supervise! Liquid dish detergent ML syringe ML Measuring beaker Graduated cylinder metric ruler Clock

Safety We obtained an MSDS sheet for motor oil and for the detergent we used.

These are in our log book. We had an adult cut the celery stalks for us. We also had an adult measure and handle the motor oil for us. We kept the samples in a safe place under adult supervision at all times. An adult disposed of the samples in a sealed trash container.

.

2/25/20 Today we averaged and analyzed our results:

Effect of Oil and Dispersant on Capillary Action of Celery StalksConditionsTested

Distance Water Moved Up Stalks in cm.Sample 1 Sample 2 Sample 3 Avg.

Control: water only

30 27 24 27

Oil only 27 28 16 23.7

Oil and detergent

8 7.5 8 7.8

Detergent only

7.5 7.5 7.5 7.5

Control Oil

DispersantOil and Dispersant

Average Height Dyed Water reached after 24 hours in cm.

Control Oil Oil and Dispersant Dispersant0

5

10

15

20

25

30

Conditions Tested3/3/20 Today we wrote our conclusion, telling about our results in words.

Our results show that both oil and dispersant had a negative impact on the plants’ ability to take up water. After 24 hours, the control sample showed the water rising an average of 27 cm. into the plant stalk. The oil impacted the plant, reducing the average to 23.7 inches. The worst impact came from the samples with dispersant. In the samples with oil and dispersant, the water rose an average of only 7.8 cm. Worst of all, the samples with only dispersant averaged 7.5 cm. We predicted the oil would have the greatest impact on capillary action. The results do not support that prediction. It turns out the dispersant had the greatest negative impact on the plants—even greater than dispersant mixed with oil. We have to conclude that the dispersant added to “clean up” the oil may be more dangerous to plants than the oil spill itself!

We were surprised that the oil did not have a huge impact on the plants’ capillary action. Although the oil turned the water dark and seemed to glob around the stalks, the oil did seem to mostly stay at the surface, so we suppose the plants were able to draw from cleaner water below. We were also surprised at the extremely negative results we got from the dispersant! Not only did the stalks in dispersant fail to take up water, the ones in dispersant alone were crispy in the leaves and completely bent over. The dispersant alone was even worse than the dispersant mixed with oil. That was very surprising. The cure seems to have been worse than the disease!

To continue this project, we would like to explore different methods of oil spill cleanup to see if there are better solutions than dispersant. We learned that dispersant is a type of detergent, and we also learned that the main way detergents clean things is by breaking down the surface tension of water. Without surface tension, plants cannot move the water up their stalks. This is probably why the samples with dispersant did so badly. We would also like to explore alternative energy sources to see if we can learn to do without oil altogether.

Bibliography:1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKHZKTRyzeg Animated Map Reveals the 550,000 miles of cable hidden under the ocean that power the internet

2. https://theconversation.com/in-our-wi-fi-world-the-internet-still-depends-on-undersea-cables-49936 In our WIFI World, the Internet Still Depends on Undersea Cables

3. http://www.eoearth.org/topics/view/50364/ Ocean Oil: Deepwater Horizon Disaster

4. http://www.eoearth.org/topics/view/50365/ Ocean Oil: Oil in the Marine Environment

5. http://earthjustice.org/features/preventing-more-bp-type-oil-disasters It Takes A Good Lawyer to Prevent More BP-Type Oil Disasters

6. http://chemistry.about.com/od/howthingswork/f/detergentfaq.htm How do Detergents Clean?

7. http://www.nalco.com/new-and-events/4297.htm COREXIT Ingredients

8. https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/heo/scan/spectrum/txt_electromagnetic_spectrum.html Electromagnetic Spectrum

9. https://phet.colorado.edu/sims/html/wave-on-a-string/latest/wave-on-a-string_en.html Wave on a String

10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNggAKfbULs Cosmos 8 Travels in Space and Time

11. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GI7AhajfhWE How Power Plants Work

12. https://www.gem.wiki/Meramec_Power_Plant Meramec Power Plant

13. https://insideclimatenews.org/news/25072018/appalachia-mountaintop-removal-coal-strip-mining-satellite-maps-environmental-impacts-data Mountaintop Mining Is Destroying More Land for Less Coal, Study Finds

14. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io8o2nTXhb0 What is Fracking Brainstuff.

15. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SakDOUlDWDs The Oil Spill

16. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml3f0KeZnsY Greta Thunberg COP25 High Level Event on climate Emergency17. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQpIVsxx014 UN Report Warns on the Impacts of Climate Change

18. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uStFvcz9Or4 Top 10 Energy sources of the Future