Salish Sea Science Surfactants and pH

By: Wendy, Monica, Kaitlyn and Kathleen Background Knowledge By: Wendy, Monica, Kaitlyn and Kathleen

Information the readers should know... If the pH in the water drops down by a lot that will make a big difference. There are two types of plankton they are zooplankton and phytoplankton We used tools that helped us do experiments

How does our subject relate to the Puget Sound? It relates to the Puget Sound because if the pH of the Puget Sound changes that would affect all the research that we get from the Puget Sound We are the ones who are affecting it and we want to know what we are doing wrong to the Puget Sound It could also affect us

Define key words ( like what is zooplankton?) pH: the acidity in water Surfactants: a substance that minimises the surface tension of liquids Watershed: an area of land where all the surface water drains to a single body of water

Question and Prediction If the surfactants increase then the pH will decrease because the surfactants are affecting the gas exchange. How does the amount of surfactants affect the pH in water?

Variables The manipulated variable was the surfactants. The responding variable was the pH. Surfactants and pH are related because we can use the pH scale to see how acidic or basic some soaps are.

The Salish Sea By The Experienced

Materials Colorimeter Bucketimeter pH probe Clip and Rope

Methods Around San Juan Islands Ask captain for permission Dropped bucketo-meter 1 foot into the water Collect the samples in the bucket Pull bucket up from water onto the boat Take samples into separate containers Tested with the colorimeter and pH probe Recorded results Graphed results

Data Analysis Station pH Surfactants 1 7.7 1.7 2 7.51 3.3 3 7.83 3.2 4 7.73 2.5 5 3.1 6 7.36 2.8 7 7.94

Conclusion If we are looking at the data points that we currently have, we can see no significant correlation between surfactants and pH. Our prediction was undecided since we did not have many data points, making it hard to see any significant correlation.

Data Analysis Continued We can see no significant trends in the data, but there is one outlier that we can see (data point 1) and if we draw a line of best fit, there is an upwards incline.