Ask an Engineer

Water is essential for life—and understanding the importance of clean drinking water is essential in understanding sustainability! Show your environmental science class the basics of water testing and treatment through a week-long...

How does dirty water get clean enough to drink? After viewing a PowerPoint that outlines the process water goes through at a water treatment plant, groups work together to design a chlorination chamber for a treatment plant.

What does it mean to be a good steward? Middle school environmentalists learn to care for their state's waterways through research, a guest speaker, and poster activity. Groups must locate and learn more about a river basin and the human...

Water is essential to life on earth. How is it then, that people can survive in desert regions with very limited access to fresh water? Through ingenious architecture and engineering, communities in India's Golden Desert have been able...

Water filtration — that's pure genius! Groups test the ability of a water filter to purify water by running chlorine contaminated water through a filter and measuring the chlorine concentrations as they filter the water. They then graph...

Students read about and discuss water and how it is used as a resource and how engineers use technology to preserve it. For this water lesson plan, students look at a picture of water treatment and tell what is wrong with the picture.

Contamination in drinking water sources or watersheds can negatively affect the organisms that come in contact with it. The affects can be severe - causing illness or, in some cases, even death. It is important for people to understand...

Prior to reaching households, water is exposed to a variety of treatments designed to render it fit for human consumption and use. One of the first treatment steps is the removal of suspended solids using chemical additives called...

Students learn about water quality testing and basic water treatment processes and technology options. Biological, physical and chemical treatment processes are addressed, as well as physical and biological water quality testing,...

Student teams locate a contaminant spill in a hypothetical site by measuring the pH of soil samples. Then they predict the direction of groundwater flow using mathematical modeling. They also use the engineering design process to come up...