Materials and Resources

Final Project Guidelines

Introduction:

This project will give you an opportunity to bring together everything that you've learned about water quality in the past two weeks. You will select a site and then conduct a detailed independent investigation of the water quality at that site.

Goals:

• To engage in using the knowledge and understanding you acquired during the unit in a novel way
• To demonstrate the mastery of / improve on your understanding of the overarching understanding goal of the unit: Understand how to knowledgeably analyze a body of water and explain your research findings
• To work independently and creatively and to guide your own project
• To gain experience organizing and managing your own science research project
• To learn from your own mistakes and to continuously improve on your work
• To work closely with the other members of your group
• The project should culminate in a product that is tangible and can be displayed

Project Guidelines

1. Choose a body of water (fresh) in the vicinity of Boston for your investigation. You should be able to reach this site fairly easily (see below for suggestions)
2. Conduct research to find if there have been any water quality investigations done on this site in the past / any background information that might shed some light on the water quality at your site
3. Conduct a survey of the site (use the site survey form)
4. Based on your research and site survey, make predictions about the six Water Quality parameters
5. Also choose one of the six parameters to investigate in more detail. Conduct additional research / do more thinking about how this parameter will depend on a particular sampling variable (i.e., depth, distance from shore, time of day, etc) and how you will investigate this.
6. Submit a research proposal, outlining
   • Your site survey and background research results
   • Your water quality predictions for your site
   • A detailed plan for how you will conduct the research -- where, when and how you will take the samples, where / how you will analyze them; any special materials that you will need
7. Conduct the research and analyze the research finding in lab
8. Explain your results based on your understanding of water quality and your background research
9. Create a poster of your project
10. Present your project to the class

    The Poster

    Using posters to summarize a scientific research project is a long-standing tradition in the scientific community. The poster is a clear, succinct, and highly visual presentation of your project and experimental findings.

    This poster should include:

    • A map or diagram showing the location of your water body and its immediate surroundings
    • A photo of one of your sampling sites
    • An outline of the main points of your experimental procedure -- include diagrams as necessary and very briefly summarize the testing methods
    • A visual presentation of your data -- use graphs, tables, charts, etc. To get a better perspective on your data it might be useful to include your data from testing tap water or distilled water for comparison.
    • A detailed paragraph explaining all your results based on what you know about water quality and your site survey and background research. Do you see any patterns in the data? What explains these water quality values? Are any of the values interrelated? How are the values related to the site's environment?
    • You should resubmit your research proposals together with your posters
    • The posters will be assessed with a rubric and later put on display at BLA

    The Presentation

    Another long-standing scientific tradition is to present your research findings to other members of the scientific community. The whole point of the presentation is to educate your classmates about the research you have done and the water quality at your site.

    The presentation should be about 6-7 minutes long with 2-3 minutes left for questions. In the presentation you should:

    • Describe the location and the setting of your site
    • Give a summary of your background research and what it lead you to predict
    • Describe any aspects of the testing procedure that you think might be different from others'. Definitely talk about your sampling variable here.
    • Present your results. Use at least one additional visual aid besides your poster.
    • Briefly explain your results -- how would you evaluate the state of this water body? Why is it this way? It might be useful here to focus more on the particular aspects of your water body that might be different from others.

    Preliminary Timeline:

    April 14	Introduce / discuss final projects
    April vacation	Choose your site Conduct site survey Conduct background research Make water quality predictions Create experimental procedure
    April 24 (Mon)	Proposals due
    April 26-27	Labs open for sample analysis
    April 28 (Fri)	Work on posters / presentations
    May 1-2	Presentations
    May 2	Posters due

    Grading Guidelines
    Click here to see how the project was graded

    Site Selection and Background Research Suggestions

    If you do not have easy access to a car, we suggest you use the following site for this project:
    - Charles River -- various locations
    - Muddy River and the Ponds in the Emerald Necklace (including Jamaica Pd)

    A wealth of background information on the water quality of the Charles River may be found at the following sites:

    Charles River Watershed Association

    The Environmental Protection Agency Charles River Page

    The USGS Water site is also worth exploring

    If you choose the Muddy River and the Emerald Necklace, we have some previous testing data we can provide.

    If you have a car, you may venture out further to the following sites:

    • Hardy Pond (Waltham)
    • Assabet River (Concord)
    • Saugus River

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