What Is the Effect of Different Conifer Type Sap Wood in Filtering Bacteria Sized Dye from Water?

Overview

Objectives/Goals The purpose of this experiment is to compare White Pine, Redwood and Ginko Biloba sapwood to see how effective they are at filtering bacteria sized dye from water. Methods/Materials 1) I made the wood filters from the branches of 3 types of conifer which are Gingko Bilboa, Redwood, and White Pine. 2) I made unfiltered water using 1 or 10 micron florescent dye. The reason I will be used this type of dye is because I don't know the particles sizes of food dye compared to bacteria. 3) I added unfiltered water to each wood filter, and waited. 4) I measured each wood filter, the rate of water from each branch, the penetration of dye in each branch, and the presence of the dye in the filter water to the unfiltered water. 3) I made a measurement for the presence of the dye in the filter water of each experiment. I made jars of dye in water at less dilution than the unfiltered water that was used in the experiment. Results The presence of the dye in the filter water was compared after passing through wood filters from the branches of Gingko Bilboa, Redwood, and White Pine. The Redwood was the best at filtering the 1 micron dye from the water, measured by rate, presence of the dye in the filter water and penetration. Conclusions/Discussion I am very surprised at how all of the conifer wood types did at filtering the one micron dye. This means that many types of gymnosperm sapwood tissues can be useful for removing disease causing agents from unfiltered water.

Awards (1)

• Honorable Mention

Competition history

• CSEF 2018 Materials Science (Junior Division Only) · Entry J1402

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

• All Materials Science and Engineering projects
• CSEF Materials Science and Engineering projects
• Every CSEF 2018 project