I have 2 short environmental biology labs this week. I attached the questions and the power point that goes with the second one.
pH and the Environment Lab
Name________________________________________________
Background Information about pH
pH is a measure of how acidic something is.
View the Power Point and answer the following questions.
What is the pH scale?
What are the measurements on the pH scale?
What makes a substance acidic?
What makes a substance basic?
What is a neutral substance?
Solution A has a pH of 3. Solution B has a pH of 10. Which solution is more acidic? ________
Give an example of an acidic substance. ________________________________
Give an example of a basic substance. _________________________________
Why is pH important in the environment?
Pollution or contaminants can alter the pH of water in an aquatic ecosystem or even the pH of precipitation.
Go to the following website:
https://www.epa.gov/caddis-vol2/caddis-volume-2-sources-stressors-responses-ph#lowchecklist
Read the information provided to answer the following questions.
According to the website, “the pH of water determines the solubility and biological availability of chemical constituents.”
What is solubility?
What does biological availability mean?
What kind of chemical constituents are they referring to?
Are metals more toxic at a higher or lower pH?_______________________
Why are metals more toxic at that pH level?
How do you measure pH?
You can use a pH meter to measure pH. Here is an example of a pH meter. The probe of the meter is placed into the solution of which you want to measure the pH. The screen shows the pH of the solution is 5.00.
Now you are going to practice using a pH meter to obtain the pH of different solutions.
Go to the following website:
https://phet.colorado.edu/sims/html/ph-scale/latest/ph-scale_en.html
Click on Macro
You see that you have 0.5 L of water in your container. You can click on the red button of the dropper at the top of the page to add more solution to your container. Add a little bit more water to the container by clicking on the red button of the dropper.
You can also add more solution by clicking on the blue handle on the right side of the screen. Add more water to your container by clicking on the blue handle.
You can remove some of the solution by clicking on the blue handle at the bottom left of your container. Click on this blue handle to remove some of the water.
Now you are ready to take the pH measurement. The round green thing is the probe of your pH meter. Put the green probe into the container with the water by dragging it to the container.
Notice that you get a pH reading when you do this. What is the pH of the water?__________
Now you are going to change the solutions in your container. Do this by clicking on the down arrow next to the box that says water. You will see a wide variety of solutions to choose from.
Pick three different solutions and determine their pH.
Solution 1 is ________________________________. pH is ___________.
Solution 2 is ________________________________. pH is ___________.
Solution 3 is ________________________________. pH is ___________.
Acid Precipitation
Acid precipitation is when rain, snow, or sleet is acidic when it falls to the ground. Dry acidic particles can also fall to the ground.
Go to the following website:
https://www.epa.gov/acidrain/what-acid-rain
Read the page and answer the questions below.
Questions:
What is acid rain? Explain how is it formed.
Explain the difference between wet and dry deposition.
How do fossil fuels impact the formation of acid rain?
How do winds impact acid rain?
Go to the bottom of the page and click on Effects of acid rain.
In what type of environments are the effects of acid rain most clearly seen? How are fish eggs affected by acidic precipitation?
How are plants and trees impacted by acid rain?
What does the buffering capacity of forests, streams, and lakes depend upon?
Besides acid rain, explain two other effects of sulfure dioxide and nitrous oxide.
