Just before the festive season I was assigned my exhibition project. At the beginning of this project we brainstormed some environmental issues that were brought up in the book our class read “The Highest Tide“. My class came up with a few big issues and ideas, such as oil spills, climate change, invasive species, and others. My challenge was to narrow down one of the  environmental issues to a specific inquiry question that I could reasearch.

My teacher critiqued the question so that it would work at an exhibition. We decided on the question “what is the most efficient way to clean up an oil spill in the Columbia River“. I began to brainstorm what I would research and how I would present my question.

The next part of the project I had to do was research my topic. During my trip to Oregon I learned a few things about the Columbia River. I learned its characteristics and abnormalities as a river, these ideas were used in my project as well as information from some online sites. I researched about the main methods used in oil spill clean up in the ocean today, and what you would have to change if there was  an oil spill in the Columbia River. Some of the sites I visited include: NOAA, An official environmental report for the 1984 spill, Common oil spill techniques, University study. Through my research I discovered lots of things I did not know previously about oil spill clean up.

My next step was to begin the construction of my presentation. I decided to complete an experiment to study the clean up of a possible oil spill in the Columbia River.

My experiment simulated the river by making the water move throughout the tank with water falls and valves. In my experiment oil was be dropped in the top water tank and slowly followed the current down to the bottom collection tank. This collection tank simulated the the open ocean. The top two tanks were both parts of the river, and were the sections of my experiment where I would clean up the spill. Once I finished my experiment I created a scientific report on my findings.

Question
What is the most efficent way to clean up an oil spill in the Columbia River.
Hypotheses
Using a method in which a cloth is placed on top of the water and scooping under with the other half of the cloth to catch the oil at the surface will preform the best in my experiment.
Experiment
To test my hypotheses I created a simulated river,then tested multiple methods on it. The three methods I tested were: 1) a tea strainer (boom), 2) a paper towel (sorbent) and 3) a giant cloth (my own personal method). I tested these methods by dropping the same amount of oil into the top water tank and then trying to take out as much oil as possible in 4 minutes and 30 seconds. The method that cleaned up the most oil consistently over 5+ trails, will be the most efficent oil clean up tecnique in my experiment.

Conclusion
The turbulant waters of a river split the oil up into very small particles that coudn’t be seperated in a boom. For the same reason the absorbant paper method was terribly inefficent due to the oil being so granular. The water was absorbed instead of the oil due to it being so small an spread out. In my model the cloth method, the method I wanted to test to prove its ability was the only method to complete the task with efficency. I do not know if it is possible to use my method in the real world but it is possible a variation of my method could be used in the mainstream oil clean up to help minimize the damage. The biggest thing I learned from this experiment is how much harder it is clean an oil spill in turbulant waters, and if there is to be an oil spill in the Columbia we may have a major crisis on our hands.

Finally, it was time to present at the exhibition, I had all of my research and all of my presentation, all I needed to do was to talk to the poeple at the exhibition. When at the exhibition I talked about how I learned about the methods to clean up oil spills, and my experiments. I had to keep the audience engaged so I created a mini experiment where my veiwers used the methods that used in my experiments to clean up the oil spill. Eventually the exhibition ended and I had said all I could have said about oil spills and the Columbia River.

picture to come

During the project we were put into groups with similar topics. The goal of the groups was to create a space that was unique to our projects. We never really did create a unique space but we did help create a very cool mural that assisted our presentation. My group consisted of Jamie, Raina, Jessie, Kai, and Kailey. We worked together to make our space work for everyone. In the end we didn’t really make our space look very different from others, and we could improve on it next time. We did very well at making our space very engaging by having interactive stations and interesting models.

Throughout the project I overcame many obstacles mainly when creating the experiment. An example problem I faced was when I couldn’t figure out how to make my current run a constantly. After a period of brainstorming I finally had the idea of a bucket with a valve and tube. This allowed the water to flow constantly while still having a decent sized tank in the top. This project was a great example of overcoming problems, to improve the project, and was a great learning experience.