• Title:
  Personal Usage-An Investigation In Individual Water Use
• Time span:
  3 days
• Brief Description:
  Students will monitor their personal water usage for a twenty four hour period. Students will use this information to assess their personal impact on the local community.
• Objectives:
  • Students will monitor personal water usage to assess water's importance in everyday life.
  • Students will collect data and perform statistical analysis including graphs of the data collected.
  • Students will learn how to enter and manipulate formulas in spreadsheets for data analysis.
• Materials:
  • Recording Worksheet
  • Water Conversion chart
• Procedure:
  1. Instruct students to keep track of the ways they use water directly for a twenty-four hour period. (This includes flushing the toilet, drinking, cooking, showering, etc.) Use the provided recording worksheet to collect the data.
  2. After the students have collected their information, have them do the following analysis by constructing two spreadsheets:
     Personal Water Usage
     • Total for each category of water use
     • Personal Total for full 24 hours
     Class Water Usage
     
     • Personal Total for each student for twenty-four hours
     • Class Total for twenty-four hours
     • Average gallons or liters used per person in the class in 24 hours
     • Total gallons or liters used by the class in a week, month, year
  3. Following the calculations and analysis, discuss with the students ways that they might be able to cut down their water usage. Ask the students if they feel they have an impact on the environment.
  4. Students at this point write an electronic lab report using a ClarisWorks template. As part of the report, students create a line graph of the individual water use amounts of each student in the class and record the results of their spreadsheet calculations
• Variations/Extensions:
  1. Students discuss adaptations plants and animlas make in their use of water
  2. Students keep track of their entire household's use of water
  3. Students start a school water conservation program.

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