OPERATION WATER DROP TOTAL HARDNESS PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING SET
Grades: 4-8
Time: 10-14 hours
Task #1:
In your city, the drinking water was being inspected. After thorough inspection of your city’s water supply, there was data collected on many different aspects of your water supply. As the health and safety inspector it is your job to look through this data and find anything that may be hazardous to the public. The data is as follows:
1. From this data, can you find any problems with the municipal water supply? Why or why not?
Task #2:
After analysis, it was found that your municipal water supply’s water hardness was higher than the recommendation in the guidelines for Canadian Drinking Water Quality. This could have significant effects on the health or comfort of the city’s citizens. However, the citizens do not know how this could really affect their health. Knowledge on water hardness levels in water supplies is lacking in your city. Your job is to give out an informative pamphlet explaining many things that people need to know about water hardness.
Questions you should be answering for people include, but are not limited to:
1. Are the guidelines enforceable by law?
2. What is water hardness?
3. What causes excess water hardness?
4. Is this important to fix quickly?
These pamphlets should be quick to read, and contain all of the necessary information people need to know about water hardness. The key is picking out the important facts.
Task #3:
After the citizens were informed of their water hardness problem and were given information on why it is a problem, they became very concerned. They now want to know what they could do to solve the problem. There are a few ways to combat this issue.
Your job is to find a good solution to this water hardness problem. Do your research and find the different ways the city or the citizens could solve this problem and find some pros and cons for each. In the end, one solution needs to be chosen, with a good explanation for choosing that solution.
