Nine Mile Creek

CT: We found out that coral reefs are being killed by dredging, when you take sand or sediment from one place and take it to another. And we believe that someone is dumping in the water, which it’s landing on the coral reef and killing it and the organisms that are in and around it. So we want to find out who’s doing it.

JM: That’s Caitlyn Taylor. She and Mason Wonka are winners in last year’s Kids’ Science Challenge, our free nationwide competition for 3rd to 6th-graders. We flew Caitlyn and Mason from Vero Beach, Florida, site of the coral reefs, to Syracuse, New York, where they met with Syracuse University’s professor Don Siegel. Don is demonstrating in his own local ecosystem, how to trace water contaminants to their source.

DS: We’ll be looking at salt contamination to this Nine Mile Creek. Salt at high concentrations is considered a toxin to some biological systems.

JM: Creek contamination in this case could be the result of salts used to de-ice roads, or the salt could be leaching in from an adjacent manufacturing site, or come from a number of other sources.

DS: So what we’re going to do is sample the water, and we’re going to analyze it for sodium and chloride, and those are the two elements that road salt consists of. Okay? And then later on we’re going to go down the creek and we’re going to analyze the same thing at another place, and there the creek passes by some waste beds that was created by industry. And the waste beds are leaking out sodium and chloride, but at different amounts then road salt, different proportions. And we’ll sample the water there and see if we can forensically determine the difference.

JM: Mason and Caitlin hope that they can use the skills they’ve learned at Syracuse’s Nine Mile Creek to solve environmental mysteries closer to home.

Pulse of the Planet’s Kids’ Science Challenge is made possible by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner. For information on this year’s competition, check out kidsciencechallenge.com. I’m Jim Metzner.

Nine Mile Creek

Tracking salt contamination at a creek in Syracuse, NY demonstrates that science is like doing detective work.
Air Date:09/27/2010
Scientist:
Transcript:

CT: We found out that coral reefs are being killed by dredging, when you take sand or sediment from one place and take it to another. And we believe that someone is dumping in the water, which it's landing on the coral reef and killing it and the organisms that are in and around it. So we want to find out who's doing it.

JM: That's Caitlyn Taylor. She and Mason Wonka are winners in last year's Kids' Science Challenge, our free nationwide competition for 3rd to 6th-graders. We flew Caitlyn and Mason from Vero Beach, Florida, site of the coral reefs, to Syracuse, New York, where they met with Syracuse University's professor Don Siegel. Don is demonstrating in his own local ecosystem, how to trace water contaminants to their source.

DS: We'll be looking at salt contamination to this Nine Mile Creek. Salt at high concentrations is considered a toxin to some biological systems.

JM: Creek contamination in this case could be the result of salts used to de-ice roads, or the salt could be leaching in from an adjacent manufacturing site, or come from a number of other sources.

DS: So what we're going to do is sample the water, and we're going to analyze it for sodium and chloride, and those are the two elements that road salt consists of. Okay? And then later on we're going to go down the creek and we're going to analyze the same thing at another place, and there the creek passes by some waste beds that was created by industry. And the waste beds are leaking out sodium and chloride, but at different amounts then road salt, different proportions. And we'll sample the water there and see if we can forensically determine the difference.

JM: Mason and Caitlin hope that they can use the skills they've learned at Syracuse's Nine Mile Creek to solve environmental mysteries closer to home.

Pulse of the Planet's Kids' Science Challenge is made possible by the National Science Foundation. I'm Jim Metzner. For information on this year's competition, check out kidsciencechallenge.com. I'm Jim Metzner.