Look Around You: Water

Look Around You on the BBC:

“SCIENCE stands for Super-Corroborative Information on Everything and Nothing in the Cosmos and Earth. That’s a pretty wide-ranging subject, I’m sure you’ll agree!

Ninn = 4

One simple way to think of Science is to imagine it as a giant, spinning roulette wheel whose numbers correspond to the great Scientists (1=Newton, 2=Einstein, 3=Quarnborg, 4=Ninn, and so on. (The ball represents Time.)).

Look Around You is an eight-part series designed to promote the understanding of Science in a simple and concise format. Although aimed at those of school-age, we are sure that many adults will also find it of interest.

The eight weekly modules contain a number of step-by-step experiments performed by qualified, professional scientists. You can follow too – in your school, or in your home laboratory.“

Bottled at the source

Here is a fascinating article on a new science/art piece in London. It combines water quality, ethnohydrology, and art to label bottled tap water from districts in London with their likely contents– such as anti-depressants, cocaine, birth control hormones, and vitamins. Here is a snippet from the blog entitled “London Biotypes: Exploring Potential City- Body Ecology.”

The largest part of the pharmaceuticals and chemicals we take go through our bodies and eventually end up in waste water. As water and waste treatment plants haven’t been designed to filter them, the content of our medicine cabinets are eventually passed into the water supply. In London, tap water comes from surface water which implies that traces of our medicine can end up in our drinking water. This results in local differences in tap water, based on the food and drugs we ingest….

Using synthetic biology and in particular the biobricks tools, bacteria are programmed to become cheap biosensors. The bacteria-sensors, housed in the small transparent compartments, change colour when oestrogen, antibiotics, Viagra or Prozac are detected in the water. Since synthetic biology is both open source and modular, this instrument can be redesigned to detect other chemicals by any Urban Biogeographer, even amateurs as the technology is becoming increasingly accessible.

What are your thoughts on this new spin on bottled water? I’d like to try the sewage sampler myself?

[image from drinktap.org and the American Water Works Association]

Visiting Catalina Island

I had a very productive trip to Catalina Island to visit the lab in city hall (actually a converted conference room) and try out my virus filtration method with real samples

Seth and Hillary, two of my brother’s roommates came with me and were my water sampling “assistants.” They had a lot of fun on the island and seeing how real science is done. When they were not lugging water up from the beach, they were taking chariot rides on my bike sled. lots of fun!

On the day we left (July 3) there was a city crew working on the sewer system near sampling site C, which is the site I sampled from the day before. It appeared to be a malfunctioning pump. At least this is what the crew told me. I don’t know if this is an ongoing problem, but if so it could be a reason for high bacteria/virus counts in the water near there. Too bad I couldn’t stick around, but I had a 10:00 AM ferry to catch that couldn’t wait.

For more pictures visit my flickr account http://flickr.com/photos/davelove/