Pond Water Essay

Skinny Dipping and You

Why this is no longer a perfect date

12/8/2007

Aaron Gonzalez

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Materials and Methods

пÑ"ј Nikon Compound Microscope

пÑ"ј Glass Microscope slides

пÑ"ј Cover Slips

пÑ"ј Paper Towels

пÑ"ј Thermometer

пÑ"ј Glass Jar

пÑ"ј pH Strips

I took the sample pond water from the library pond (Central Michigan University), thinking well during mock rock this year I want to know really what I am swimming in. So I took a jar then scooped it up from the muskiest part of the pond. After collecting the sample we placed the sample in a glass jar in the Biology lab at Mid Michigan Community College by a window and then it was sealed with oxygen holes. We would be checking on the sample once a week for lasting six weeks, just incase we miss a week for any reason.

The things we were looking for were the temperature of the water and we measured in degrees Celsius using a thermometer. We took drops of the water and dropped them very carefully and as neatly as we could on to strips that measured the levels of total chlorine, free chlorine, total hardness, total alkalinity, and pH. Waiting about 15-20 seconds, we recorded the results and compared them by color on charts and wrote down our findings on what the water contained on that testing day. Besides recording with physical tests we also did visual and aroma inspections. We noted the clarity and the odor each time we took samples. We recorded all the data on sheets in our Green Bio Notebook.

Results

Things did not really change in the pond water sample that we retrieved; it really was basically getting a good sample and seeing if you could get different things that are alive and swimming around in your sample. The only thing that really had a drastic change over the time was the odor and the color of the pond water sample. The odor went from tolerably disgusting, to holy cow what is this smell and am I going to get cancer from it? The color however became different where all the dirt, sludge, etc… settled to the bottom of the jar and the “water” rose to the top so it looked like it how it should in a pond. But the water on the top of the dirt started going from clear, to cloudy, to just like a like brown mist that just made me want to vomit looking at it, to think that people actually swim in this pond at least once a year for a university sponsored activity. The sample of life that I got were relalativly the same. I got pretty much the same sample of Rotifers, Diatoms, and green Algae, nothing exciting at all. Measureable things that were observed during this pond water experiment such as total chlorine, free chlorine, total hardness, and total alkalinity all stayed pretty much the same with variations at the -/+ .2 rate. But the pH for my pond water sample did rise between 8.1-9.0 which is incredible and I have no idea why.

Measureable Quantitative Date

Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5

Degrees C 16 18 19 18 19

Total Chlorine 1.0 1.1 1.1 1.2 1.2

Free Chlorine 0.5 0.5 0.6 0.6 0.6

Total Hardness 20/425 23/425 25/425 25/425 25/425

Total Alkalinity 180 180 180 220 180

pH 8 8.1 8.3 8.4 9.0

Slide Observation

Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5

Slide #1 Rotifers Rotifers Rotifers+Algae Rotifers+Algae Rotifers+Algae

Slide #2 Diatoma Diatom Cyclotella Ankistrodesmus Fragilaria

Slide #3 Ciliate Algae Diatom Protozoan Paramecium

Appearance

Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5

Color Tan Dark Tan Brown Dark Brown Light Grey

Smell Terrible Fish