Edgewood Elementary (41)/Interim Report

Interim Report
http://mode.lanl.k12.nm.us/get_interim1112.php?team_id=41

Purpose
The purpose of this project is to see if the jet fuel that leaked from Kirtland Airforce Base will get into the water supply. We will do this by making a computer model to see if microbes will consume the jet fuel and neutralize it.

Our Plan
Our team will use Starlogo TNG to model 4 different ways of cleaning the EDB.All the models will be using Microbes. The ways that we used the following are enhancing. They are: a Charcoal Filter, adding Lactate, adding Oxygen, and Natural Attenuation.

Progress
Our progress so far is that we are working on four different programs with one being the base model, one oxygen, one lactate, and a charcoal filter model. We have done eight pages of research on these subjects: Past oil spills, Aquifers, and Microbes. We have a meeting scheduled with KAFB scientists. We have already visited a water treatment plant in which we learned how microbial lifeforms can help to clean up water.

Hypothesis
Our team thinks that the Lactate will clean up the EDB more effectively than the other methods.

Oil Spill/Microbes/Aquifers Research Report
Have you ever wondered if there is living things inside your body other than cells or dust mites? Well there is. There is microbes too!

Microbes are tiny organisms that can only be seen with a microscope. Some microbes are even submicroscopic and can only be seen by special electron microscopes. Microbes have the ability to live in extremely harsh environments whether it be intense heat or extreme cold. Some microbes are referred to as germs or bacteria and can make you sick while others are essential to all life. Surprisingly there is several billion more bacterial cells in the human body than there is human cells. The bacterial form of microbes are vulnerable to Clorox wipes, hot water, air freshener, and basically to most disinfectants.

Microbes are used for many things. Sometimes they are used at water treatment plants to remove contaminates that cannot be left in water. Another use for microbes is to help clean up fuel spills. The microbes will quite literally eat the fuel. Certain types of microbes can live longer than a human! Microbes will occasionally die but then carnivorous microorganisms will come and eat the dead ones although other types of carnivorous microbes will eat living microbes.

Microbes can be separated into five different groups; Archae, Bacteria, Fungi, Protista, and Viruses. Archae are bacteria look alikes that are living fossils that are evidence to the very first living things on earth. Bacteria are often dismissed as germs but are very helpful. An example of how Bacteria helps us is they support the atmosphere or eat types of dangerous garbage. Fungi can be sizing from a grain of yeast to a 3 and a half mile wide mushroom and is useful for decomposing waste. Protista is a plant-like algae that produces much of the oxygen that we breath. Viruses are unable to do much of anything on their own but they will attack host cells, wreak havoc, and cause diseases. From my research i have discovered that microbes can be both helpful and unhelpful as well as being essential for life or being deadly enough to cause disease or kill. From the scientists’ research, the research found that there have been a lot of oil spills all over the world and on most of them they got in to the ground water. The one that leaked from Kirtland Air Force Base had EDB (ethylene dibromide.) The jet fuel that leaked from Kirtland had EDB which has not been legal in the USA for a long time. The jet fuel that spilt from Kirtland has not reached Albuquerque's ground water supply yet. If they do what they are doing now it might happen soon. They have monitoring wells placed across the city to monitor the spill.

The spill has leaked 8 billion gallons of jet fuel in to the ground. It has been leaking since late 1950-1999. People in the neighborhoods that have not been contaminated yet say that they can smell the jet fuel in there water. People dislike what they are doing to try to clean it up. Some people say that the drilling that they do is loud. From websites that I have looked at it says that even a sniff of the EDB can be very harmful to your body. EDB can cause cancer and other side defects that will harm your body. People are not drinking out of the water that comes from their tap water.

EDB was used in the jet fuel as an anti-knocking substance. The EDB that was in the jet fuel has leaked in to the ground. There has been burn pits that have affected people. In those burn pits they burnt jet fuel and some of the side defects are breathing difficulties, skin itching and rashes, eye irritation and burning,and coughing and throat irritation. In the jet fuel that was burnt in the burn pits it did not contain EDB because EDB is now illegal because of what it has done to the environment and what it has done to people that have gotten sick by it.

If the jet fuel gets in to the groundwater supply Albuquerque will have no more clean water. The fuel has not reached the monitoring wells yet. There are three wells the first one is 500 feet deep, second one is 50 feet deep, and the third one is 100 feet deep. They estimate that it is 500 feet below ground. There has been no sign that the ground has not differed since it was leaked. Kirtland Air force base says that they are willing to spend whatever it takes to clean it up. From my research it says that the jet fuel is only 1.6 miles away from the wells.

Do you ever wonder where your water comes from? They come from aquifers. We will tell you what an aquifer is! An aquifer is a area underground where water is. Aquifers can occur at various depths. They can be 5 feet down, or 200 feet down. A lot of the time aquifers can have clean water. But sometimes they do not. There are two different types of aquifers with clean or unclean water. There are saturated and unsaturated aquifers. Saturated aquifers have clean water usually and their atmoshpereic pressure is bigger than the water head. The definition of a water table (which is like a aquifer) is that the water head pressure is the same as the atmoshpereic pressure. Unsaturated is when above the water table the gauge pressure is negative (absolute pressure can’t be negative but gauge pressure can) and the water that doesn’t fully go into the pores, goes into a suction (a suction is when water goes into a funnel.)

Many aquifers that are close to the surface get a lot of their water from the rain fall. The ones that are underground mainly get a lot of their water from lakes that go deep downward. Lots of desert areas such as New Mexico can have water resources near silicon and sandstone.

The underground water can also be in underground rivers as in underground caves. This has a chance of happening near eroded silicon, which only make a small percentage of the Earth. Usually this can be like a kitchen sponge, it sucks saturated water into holes, which can be used for water. We depend on groundwater as much as we depend on air to live. Our fresh-water aquifers (the ones that aren’t contaminated with stuff) can get water from salt-water. This could turn out to be a serious problem. We can not drink salt-water so if it (or other contaminates) gets into our water supply, we can cause some serious damage. This can also be a big problem near the ocean, where pumping aquifer water is excessive.

The aquifers that are close to the ground can be used for watering crops. A lot of the aquifers for use of crops are near the surface and are fresh-water aquifers. Also, aquifer depletion is one of the reasons of the Great Food Crisis of 2011 When fresh-water aquifers are near the ocean there is salt-water that leaks into the aquifer. However, salt-water is denser than fresh-water so the salt-water goes downward. So, it makes it easier to get the fresh-water out but you can still have the chance of pumping up salt-water.

One of the largest underground aquifers is the Great Artisan Basin. This aquifer provides a lot of water for Queensland and parts of South Africa. This aquifer is 1.7 million KM in area.

MICROBE LINKS

 * 1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacteria
 * 2) http://textbookofbacteriology.net/themicrobialworld/origins.html

AQUIFER LINKS

 * 1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquifer

OIL SPILL LINKS

 * 1) http://www.marinergroup.com/oil-spill-history.htm
 * 2) http://www.macon.com/2010/08/15/1229614/south-bibb-residents-fear-contamination.html
 * 3) http://www.abqjournal.com/main/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/kirtlandmay.jpg
 * 4) http://www.kob.com/article/stories/S2237756.shtml
 * 5) http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_do_bacteria_eat
 * 6) http://www.macon.com/2010/08/15/1229614/south-bibb-residents-fear-contamination.html
 * 7) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_fuel
 * 8) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_fuel
 * 9) http://abcalliance.org/?p=1581
 * 10) http://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/burnpits/index.asp
 * 11) http://www.koat.com/news/27306599/detail.html
 * 12) http://www.niaid.nih.gov/topics/microbes/pages/default.aspx
 * 13) http://www.epa.gov/ogwdw/pdfs/factsheets/soc/ethylene.pdf
 * 14) http://www.kirtland.af.mil/search/generalsearch.asp?q=jet+fuel&btnG.x=0&btnG.y=0&site=Kirtland
 * 15) http://lakeland.edu/AboutUs/MSDS/PDFs/543/Jet%20Fuel%20No%203%20%28All%20Brands%29.pdf
 * 16) http://www.kirtland.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-080731-037.pdf
 * 17) http://water.usgs.gov/wrri/00grants/NMaquifers.pdf
 * 18) http://info.ngwa.org/gwol/pdf/872944335.PDF
 * 19) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbial_corrosion
 * 20) http://www.abqjournal.com/main/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/kirtlandmay.jpg
 * 21) http://www.marinergroup.com/oil-spill-history.htm
 * 22) http://www.macon.com/2010/08/15/1229614/south-bibb-residents-fear-contamination.html
 * 23) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12502073
 * 24) http://www.krqe.com/dpp/news/Kirtland-fuel-spill-ready-for-cleanup

Introduction
Hello Team 41!

I am a sophomore at New Mexico Tech and I am pursuing a degree in computer science. I decided to major in computer science because I was interested in how computers work, and I want to learn how to use them to create solutions for complex problems. I currently work in my department as a student researcher for EPSCoR. Someday I want a career in a workshop, programming robots. I have been involved in programs similar to Challenge/GUTS in previous years, however this is my first year on the feedback team.

Progress
I see that your topic has been refined to determine the most effective method of cleaning EDB (ethylene dibromide). This is a very noble environmental goal considering the hazardous effects this compound has on living things. The efforts your team is making at obtaining your information is outstanding. I see a wealth of resources about previous oil spills and how they were treated. Your visits to both the water treatment plant and to Kirtland will prove to be very useful places of research material for your model.

From the information you have gathered, I would recommend that you it to find the situations where this compound has spilled before. Identify how it was contained or cleaned up in those previous situations. You can use this information to select the best methods to compare. The easiest way to accomplish this would be to ask the scientists at Kirtland which methods they would use, AFTER you have conducted your own research of course!

Mentors
I didn't find a specific mentor in your proposal. Does your team have one?

Model
I see your team will be using star-logo TNG to model the interaction of microbes and EDB (ethylene dibromide) using 4 different cleanup methods.

Here are some things to think about: Does your team have a specific model type in mind?

What are the variables in your model?

What is the factor that will confirm or disprove your hypothesis? eg. What percentage of the contaminate must be removed? (Its near impossible to remove 100% of any environmental contaminate)

How will the output of the model help you draw your conclusions?

Face to Face Evaluation
Remember that you will have a face-to-face evaluation later this month!

Utilize this Judges' rubric used for for the Expo judging, in April, to organize your posts.

Good work guys! You have made great leaps in progress! I look forward to the outcome of your model!