Copy+of+Water+Footprint+Activity

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School

Portland Community College *

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Course

110

Subject

Geography

Date

Apr 3, 2024

Type

docx

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Uploaded by ChiefWater4000

Water Footprint Activity Objectives: ● Develop a hypothesis about your personal water use. ● Collect data on your personal water use by using an online water calculator ● Represent data in a table and a graph ● Interpret and draw conclusions from your data ● Discuss the broader impacts of your results ● Consider how these findings might be used in your sustainability model The Scientific Method: Scientists use a process called the scientific method to design experiments that answer scientific questions. This process has several steps, and it does not always follow a set linear path. If you are not familiar with the scientific method, this UC Berkeley website has some great information about the iterative process of science. Overview of the Scientific Method: • Observe the World Around You • Identify a Problem or Question • Make An Explanation That Can Be Tested (Hypothesize) • Design an Experiment to Test the Hypothesis • Analyze the Data Collected • Draw Conclusions Based on the Data • Communicate the Results In this activity, you are going to use the scientific method to learn more about your personal water use. The first step in the scientific method is making observations. You observe yourself every day! For the first few questions of this activity, think about the ways that you typically use water and use these “observations” to answer the following questions.

Predictions and Hypotheses (1.5 points): 1. What are some ways in which you directly and indirectly use water throughout the day? Remember that direct water use is use that you can measure while indirect water use is water that is embedded in things we purchase and consume. For example- how much water went into growing that apple that you ate for a snack? (hint: you should have a fairly large list here!) a. Direct: drink about 70 oz. of water a day, wash hands for 20 seconds about 20 times a day, shower every day for about 10 minutes, do 1 load of laundry a day, rinse off dishes for about 2 minutes a day, wash face and brushing teeth, water plants once a day (depending on which plants need water that day), using the toilet. b. Indirect: one serving of fruits a vegetables a day, water used to produce my clothes, water used to produce the parts for my car, water used to produce electricity for my house and to charge my devices, water used to serve animals whose by-products I eat. 2. Look at your water use ways and think about how they fit into the following categories: household, shower, bathtub, bathroom sink, toilet, kitchen sink, dishes, laundry, greywater system, lawn & garden, rain barrel, swimming pool, car washing, driving, electricity, shopping habits, paper, plastic, bottles & cans, fabrics, diet, pet food. a. Which three of these categories would you expect are your largest water use categories? List the three categories here and then add them to column 1 in Table 1 below. i. shower, laundry, and watering plants b. Which three of these categories would you expect are your smallest water use categories? List the three categories here and then add them to column 1 in Table 1 below. i. Drinking, electricity, and fashion fabrics The next part of the scientific process that we will work with today is asking a scientific question . A scientific question must be testable and measurable. The scientific question we will ask today is: Which of the types of water-use (listed above) will be your overall largest water-use category? Now that we have our scientific question, we need to develop our hypothesis . A hypothesis is a proposed explanation that can be tested (using data!) and it should be an answer to the scientific question above.

3. Generate a hypothesis about your water use. This hypothesis will be based on how you know you use water. a. Based on how I use my water, I hypothesize that showering is the way that I use most of my water during one day. Data Collection and Results (1 point): 4. Complete your Water Footprint analysis by answering the questions in this online calculator: What's Your Water Footprint ? You will need to collect specific gallons per day data from these results (so don’t close the calculator until you have finished this assignment). a. What were your largest and smallest water use categories based on the data estimates generated? Provide the gallons/day estimate for each from your Water Footprint Calculator results. i. My largest water use category was my shopping habits with 583 gallons a day and my smallest water use category was bottles and cans with -30 gallons a day. b. Add your largest and smallest categories and associated gallons/day results to the last two rows of Table 1 below (unless they are already present in the table). c. Add all results for gallons/day estimates of water use for the categories you previously listed in Table 1 . Table 1. Water Use Results : Table 1 details estimated gallons/day of water use for selected categories of water use, based on individualized water use using the online Water Calculator listed in this assignment. Water use categories Water-Use Estimates (from WaterCalculator.org results) in Gallons per Day Shopping habits 583 Showering 20 Laundry 10 Watering Plants 5 Drinking .5 Electricity 402 Fashion Fabrics -6 Bottles and cans -30

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