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Fall 2001 Discussion Area
Welcome
to the Project Discussion Area!
Please use this area to write and post your Letters of Introduction, to
share any questions or comments you may have about data in the database or
about the project, and to submit your Final Reports. If you would like to
share the URL (web address) of your school home page with other
participants, please include it when you post your Letter of Introduction.
If you happen to experience any difficulty submitting information to the
Discussion Area or submitting your data in the Project Data Area, email
the information to me and I will submit it on your behalf.
In case you ever have difficulty accessing the project web site, you can
try the mirror site:
http://www.k12science2.org/curriculum/dipproj/
You may want to write down this information for future reference. Have fun
with the project!
Liesl Hotaling
Project Leader |
Blue Ridge
Letter of Introduction
The following are some of the items I felt
important to include and some my students wrote. Lakeside is a town of
approximately 7,000 in the White Mountains of eastern Arizona. We are
located at 34d 10m N-109d 59m W. Lakeside is a mountain community. Our
elevation ranges from 7,000 to 7,300 feet. Yes, we do get quite a bit of snow.
We are surrounded by the largest Ponderosa Pine forest in the world.
Our mid school is for grades 4 through 6. We have approximately 550 students
in the mid school. Our school and community are proud of the fact that our
high school football team has won the Arizona 3A championship 5 of the last 6
years and owns the second longest winning streak ever nationally. They won 62
straight, lost one and now are up to something like 22 again. We have a large
ski resort near by and are a popular area for Phoenix and Tucson people to
cool off in the summer. (Way to go Diamondbacks!)
Our water source was the Big Springs wildlife area of Walnut Creek. Our
district owns the area in conjunction with the U.S.F.S. and Arizona Game &
Fish. It is a small creek with some residential and some park area surrounding
it. Wildlife in the area includes such things as elk, black bear, beavers,
squirrels, ducks and a variety of endangered dace.
Our hypothesis was that the water would be fairly good quality because it
comes partially from a clean lake and partially from a spring. We were however
concerned about the residential areas polluting the water.
Observations
1.Big Springs area of Walnut creek.
2.34d8mN.-109d58mW.
3.Sampled 10/3/01 at app.1:45 PM
4.Sunny and warm for last week.
5.Stream was slightly murky compared to normal and the water was above the
normal banks due to a recent Beaver dam wedged into culverts where it goes
under a road. Plants appeared much thicker than normal.
6.Slightly dirty water with a dirty odor, probably from being out of the bank
and into a meadow with dirt areas and considerable elk scat.
7.Visual turbidity was moderate.
8.It appeared that the creek was negatively affected by being temporarily out
of it's banks.
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West Orange
Letter of Introduction
Hi! We're a group of 38 eighth grade Earth Science students from Edison
Middle School in West Orange, New Jersey. (40:47:34N, 74:15:49W) West Orange
is in Essex Count and has a population of approximately 41,000. The town is
12.1 square miles. We are going to test the quality of the water in a stream
that runs next to our school. We think we will find that the water quality is
poor. We think this because there is graffiti spray painted in the area where
the stream flows deeper down from the street level and a lot of people hang
out there and throw things into the water.
Observations
The stream we tested is located next to our school 40:47:34N, 74:15:49W
We sampled the water on Wednesday, November 7th at 9:00 AM. The
weather was 57 oF, wind 7 mph, no precipitation Algae can be seen growing in
the stream, there are a lot of rotting leaves in the water and there is trash
and graffiti painted along the sides. The water is clear and
smells bad from the rotting leaves.
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