How do oil and oil dispersants affect the capillary action ...



Oil Spill Cleanup

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How do oil and oil dispersants affect the capillary action of plants?

Background

We chose this project because we learned about the problems caused by use of fossil fuels. We wanted to learn more about the problems associated with our use of oil. We learned that some oil is drilled from the bottom of the ocean, and a lot of it is transported in ships across the ocean. This leads to accidents where the oil is spilled into the water. We designed this experiment to see how the marsh plants are affected by oil spills and cleanup. We wanted to find out if the dispersants really help clean the water for the plants, and how much oil affects plants when they are growing in the water.

In our research, we learned that plants take up water by a process called capillary action. They depend on the surface tension of water to move water through their tissue. We also learned about oil spills, including the Deep Water Horizon Oil Spill. It was the largest marine oil spill in history, and it went on for a long time. Oil washed into the marshes and beaches along the Gulf coast of the U.S. These wetlands protect the United States gulf coastline from storms and filter pollutants from the water coming from the Mississippi River and other rivers before it reaches the ocean. We learned that in addition to the oil spilled, a lot of dispersant called Corexit was used to clean up the spill. We found out that Corexit contains ingredients found in many household cleaners and detergents like baby bath and shampoo. This was concerning to us, because we learned that detergent works by breaking water’s surface tension. We decided to design an experiment to see how oil and dispersants affect plants’ ability to move water.

This project is important because it tests how oil and dispersants affect a plant’s ability to take up water. This is very important for understanding how to best deal with oil spills in the future, especially when they are near coastlines. We will measure how capillary action is affected by comparing the distance dyed water is able to move up each stalk in 24 hours.

Learning About Capillary Action and Surface Tension…

Learning about fossil fuel use…

Oil refinery making oil into gasoline in Roxanna, Illinois near St. Louis…

Oil arrives here through long pipelines that run underground all across North America. It is stored here in large tanks underground, and shipped out on trains and trucks.

Picture courtesy of Ruth Gregory

Surface mining for coal leaves forested

mountains looking like tree-less craters.



Learning About Ways to Solve the Problem…

Picture courtesy of

Greta Thunberg, activist for change speaks before the United Nations commission on Climate Change.

Look what kids can do!

Bibliography:

1. Animated Map Reveals the 550,000 miles of cable hidden under the ocean that power the internet

2. In our WIFI World, the Internet Still Depends on Undersea Cables

3. Ocean Oil: Deepwater Horizon Disaster

4. Ocean Oil: Oil in the Marine Environment

5. It Takes A Good Lawyer to Prevent More BP-Type Oil Disasters

6. How do Detergents Clean?

7. COREXIT Ingredients

8. Electromagnetic Spectrum

9. Wave on a String

10. Cosmos 8 Travels in Space and Time

11. How Power Plants Work

12. Meramec Power Plant

13. Mountaintop Mining Is Destroying More Land for Less Coal, Study Finds

14. What is Fracking Brainstuff.

15. The Oil Spill

16. Greta Thunberg COP25 High Level Event on climate Emergency

17. UN Report Warns on the Impacts of Climate Change

18. Top 10 Energy sources of the Future

Testable Question

Will the presence of oil, dispersant, or oil and dispersant affect the amount of time it takes for water to be taken up by a celery cutting?

Prediction

We predict that the oil will have the strongest negative effect on the capillary action because we think the oil will make the water thicker and harder for the plant to absorb.

Constant Conditions

• Independent Variables: the presence of oil, dispersant, and oil combined with a dispersant in the water supply.

• Dependent Variable: the time it takes the water to rise to the top of the celery through their capillaries.

• Control: We used plain colored water with no oil or dispersant as a control.

• Constant Conditions: the amount and temperature of the water, the size and shape of containers, the size of the celery stalks, the amount of detergent, food coloring and oil added to each sample, and the temperature of the room.

Procedure:

1. Have an adult cut 12 fresh celery stalks with leaves into equal lengths about 10cm. long. Cut from the non-leafy end, and keep the stalk lengths equal to the joint where the leaves sprout)

2. Measure 70 ml. of water into 12 identical cups. We used 266 ml. plastic cups.

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3. Add 15 drops of red food coloring to each cup.

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4. Have an adult measure 20 ml. of motor oil into 6 of the cups. We used 2-cycle oil.

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5. Measure 10 ml. of liquid dish detergent into 3 of the cups with oil and 3 of the cups with plain water.

6. Place a stalk of celery in all of the cups. Mark the time they were set up.

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7. After 24 hours, measure how far the red dye has travelled up the celery stalk for each sample.

Materials:

• 12 identical containers: We used 266 ml. plastic cups

• Water

• red food coloring,

• 12 stalks of celery

• Knife

• 2-cycle oil

• An adult to supervise!

• Liquid dish detergent

• ML syringe

• ML Measuring beaker

• Graduated cylinder

• metric ruler

• Clock

Safety

• We obtained an MSDS sheet for motor oil and for the detergent we used. These are in our log book.

• We had an adult cut the celery stalks for us.

• We also had an adult measure and handle the motor oil for us.

• We kept the samples in a safe place under adult supervision at all times.

• An adult disposed of the samples in a sealed trash container.

Data and Identification

Capillary Action in Oil Spill Conditions

|Conditions |Distance Water Moved Up Stalks in cm. |

|Tested | |

| |Sample |Sample 2 |Sample 3 |Avg. |

| |1 | | | |

|Control: water only |30 |27 |24 |27 |

|Oil only |27 |28 |16 |23.7 |

|Oil and detergent |8 |7.5 |8 |7.8 |

|Detergent only |7.5 |7.5 |7.5 |7.5 |

Average Height Dyed Water reached after 24 hours in cm.

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Conditions Tested

Trials and Samples

We used 3 samples for each of the conditions we tested for this experiment.

Results after 24 hours:

Control Oil

Oil and Dispersant Dispersant

Conclusion & Reflection

Our results show that both oil and dispersant had a negative impact on the plants’ ability to take up water. After 24 hours, the control sample showed the water rising an average of 27 cm. into the plant stalk. The oil impacted the plant, reducing the average to 23.7 inches. The worst impact came from the samples with dispersant. In the samples with oil and dispersant, the water rose an average of only 7.8 cm. Worst of all, the samples with only dispersant averaged 7.5 cm. We predicted the oil would have the greatest impact on capillary action. The results do not support that prediction. It turns out the dispersant had the greatest negative impact on the plants—even greater than dispersant mixed with oil. We have to conclude that the dispersant added to “clean up” the oil may be more dangerous to plants than the oil spill itself!

We were surprised that the oil did not have a huge impact on the plants’ capillary action. Although the oil turned the water dark and seemed to glob around the stalks, the oil did seem to mostly stay at the surface, so we suppose the plants were able to draw from cleaner water below. We were also surprised at the extremely negative results we got from the dispersant! Not only did the stalks in dispersant fail to take up water, the ones in dispersant alone were crispy in the leaves and completely bent over. The dispersant alone was even worse than the dispersant mixed with oil. That was very surprising. The cure seems to have been worse than the disease!

To continue this project, we would like to explore different methods of oil spill cleanup to see if there are better solutions than dispersant. We learned that dispersant is a type of detergent, and we also learned that the main way detergents clean things is by breaking down the surface tension of water. Without surface tension, plants cannot move the water up their stalks. This is probably why the samples with dispersant did so badly. We would also like to explore alternative energy sources to see if we can learn to do without oil altogether.

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