Wetland Separation Lab Report Purpose: The purpose for this experiment is to separate all the substances from

the wetland mixture. How will we separate the substances and what may we find in our wetland sample? Hypothesis: We predict the sample may contain a lot of natural resources for e.g. soil. mud, grass, leaves, feathers, insects and wood chips. Yet, there may be human littered items such as any sort of garbage. Since there is a gas station an a steel mill nearby there may be abandoned pieces of steel and some oil. These are our predictions and the reasons we predicted them are in the chart below.

Possible Substances OIl

Reasons for our prediction

Since there is a gas station near the wetland there may be some oil dropped into the wetland and in our sample. The wetland must have some soil or mud since it rains around it there soul possibly be some left over mud or soil. If there can be soil then there can be grass to because you can grow grass in the soil so in our sample it may contain some pieces of grass. Since it is as a wetland there can be trees near it and since its fall leaves are falling and being blown so some may be blown into our sample. As it says there is a steel mill nearby the wetland and ever so often people may litter unwanted steel that can be misplaced in the wetland then again in our sample. We have lots of birds in our community and ever so often there leaves may fall into the sample. Humans may walk past the wetland and litter garbage that we may find in our sample. The soil or mud may contain small stones or pebbles that can also be displaced into our wetland sample. Lastly theres also a park near the wetland but it has wood chips not sand so children may throw the wood chips into the water and can be in our wetland sample.

Soil/ Mud

Grass

Leaves

Abandoned steel

Feathers Wrappers/ Garbage Pebbles/ Stones

Wood chips

Materials: We believe that the following materials will be needed to conduct this experiment

1 pair of gloves 1 tweezer 1 paper plate 3 filter papers 1 funnel 1 magnifying glass 1 sifter 1 paper towel roll 1 table 1 magnet 1 beaker

Procedure: 1. Read through the materials and gather them so they are ready for use. 2. Start by making sure your workstation is organized and ready for your experiment. 3. Take your pair of gloves and gently wear them on your hands. 4. Place a paper towel on your table and carefully and slowly place your wetland sample on top of it and the paper plate next to the sample. 5. Take your magnifying glass and attentively observe your wetland sample and see whether or not any of the substances we predicted are in there. 6. Take your tweezers, hold them from the closed part and pull out natural substances that can be seen with a naked eye (e.g. grass, leaves, wood chips, stones or pebbles, and feathers,) 7. Now for the substances you have removed in step 6 you should place them on your plate and make their own sections based on the substance. ( grass in 1 section, leaves in another section etc.) 8. You are done using your tweezers for now place them aside on a paper towel on the table. 9. Since the magnet is attracted to the tweezers that are made from steel, you want to place the magnet and it should attract right on the open side of your tweezers. 10. Now take the tweezers from step 9 and dig them into the wetland sample carefully which will attract all the abandoned steel substances. 11. Now sort the steel into its own section on the plastic plate. 12. Place another paper towel on your desk on top of that place your beaker, and take your sifter and place it into the beaker. 13. Carefully pick up your wetland sample with care and then pour it slowly into the sifter with the funnel underneath it and the one placed in the beaker. 14. Now after it filters through the sifter you must now gently remove the sifter from the beaker and then place a paper towel beneath the sifter. 15. Use your tweezers now, you take your tweezers and take the siftr from step 14 and like stroke through the sifter so that the sand can go through the holes of it while the soil remains. 16. Now remove the paper towel that was under the sifter with care and pour the sand into

the plate as its own section. 17. The sifter with the soil remained in it should still be on the paper towel so now you should pick that up to and also scrape it clean onto the plate as soil in its own section. 18. Now take the beaker and pour the sifted sample back into your box with the wetland sample in it. 19. Now take a filter paper and place it inside the funnel and then place that funnel into the beaker we just emptied. 20. You now carefully take the wetland sample that was place in the box and slowly pour it into the filter paper and wait for it to filtrate. 21. After its done filtering take the filter paper and put it on the paper plate, and now take the filtered sample and once more pour it with gentle hands into the box with the wetland sample so the beaker should now be empty. 22. You now want to take your 2nd filter paper and also place that into the funnel , then place that funnel into the beaker once more. 23. Pick up your wetland sample box that has the filtered water in it and now very carefully pour it into the beaker once more (the beaker we did in step 22). 24. Wait for the water in step 23 r filtrate. 25. Now after its done filtering take the filter paper out of the funnel and place it in the plate and then pour the 2nd filtered water back into the box we got our sample in. 26. Take your last filter paper and place it into the funnel, then the funnel should gently be placed into the beaker. 27. Now take the wetland mixture once more and gently, slowly pour the water into the filter paper. 28. Patiently wait for it to filter. 29. Now once its done filtering remove the filter paper from the funnel and place it on the plate (you should have 3 filter papers on the plate now.) 30. Once that is done you must wait for it to evaporate may take 1-2 hours. 31. Now that you take a look at the beaker it will look something like this-> 32. Congratulations ! you have now separated all the substances from the wetland sample. 33. Clean your workstation and remember to wash your materials with soap, paper towels in the garbage and so all you should leave on your beaker is your separated substances, 3 filter papers and your evaporated water that is in your beaker. Observations We noticed that most of our predicted substances were contained in the wetland mixture. Separating the grass was difficult because it was often bunched up with other substances so it was the hardest to remove. We decided that we should have separated the nails first because whenever we tried separating other substance the nails would hook on t the tweezers and bother us from separating what we wanted to. For every time we filtered the water got cleaner and thinner which made it easier to clean. We learned how not to pour all the water in the filter paper at once because it would easily rip when we had done that and that would affect the process of separation. When we first got our sample it smelled terrible but throughout every separation it was better and it was easier to cooperate with as well. Lastly we observed that cooperation was very well followed it was on task and completed on time.

Discussion The methods of separation we used in this experiment were filtration, evaporation, sifting and magnetism. We used these specific methods because we believe that we can separate all the substances from the wetland mixture using them. In our methods filtration was used with the funnel and filter paper to separate the substances that were harder to remove with the tweezers or any other material. Magnetism was used from the magnet so we could separate all our magnetic steel substances. We also used sifting, we used it with the sifter and to separate the soil from the sand so that we could make 2 different categories for both. Lastly, we used evaporation when we had finished separating all our substances and when we had only water and oil left.

Conclusion We were quite successful in separating the mixture because at the end of it we had all our substances out of the mixture in different categories in the plate and even our beaker had no small substances left since we used evaporation. I probably think that the grass was the hardest substance to separate, because there were so many of them and they were bunched up with other substances so that made it hard to remove. Most of the substances we predicted that would be in the mixture were in there and so that made it easier because we had no unnecessary steps on separating a substance that wasn't in the sample. If we were given a chance to do this activity again , then I would try to do what we did wrong the 1st time right the second and also try to keep everything more organized so we aren't losing materials or we can't find things of our own.