Monday, September 6, 2010

Separation Techniques Group work

Separation techniques was a topic which was onlly briefly covered at first. That was during the beginning of the june holidays. We were split into groups, our objectives was to use the given apparatus and solve a problem stated on an e-learning site.
Back then, we knew little about separation techniques, but still, my group fared much worse than other groups as we only got 1 ace points. When I reflect back on our work and compare that to group 2 from my class. I realised why our work was really insufficient. You can go to science excite, the blogpost on Home Learning PBL to find out why.
I will just brief you why now. My groups work is bacsically not clearly stated, it lacks reasoning and explanations, also the theory and keywords used were wrong. While on the other hand, 1a2 groups 2's work did a brilliant work because,

1)They first pointed out the main aim and the problem to be solved of the experiment
2) Apparatus available
3) Step by step procedure, including pictures and diagrams, most importantly was their explanation for every point they have said and also, their organisation makes it easier for the reader to read the work.
One example would be that they first distinguished the different properties of the substances present in the poluted sea water.

Miscible or immiscible: 1)oil, 2)alchohol( liquids)
3) Sand and gravel (Solid)
4) Broken glass bits (Solid)
5) Remnants from dead organisms (Solid)

They also stated the apparatus needed such as separating funnel, and fractional distillation. This will give the reader a better idea of how the sea water is separated from the inpurities, together with the visual aid of the diagrams and pictures.







The bigger scale project cannot be successful as the cost is high and not all inpurities will be removed. This can thus be related to my ACE project in my earlier post about NEWater. The NEWater process includes using reverse osmosis, micro-filtration and uv disinfection. You can find out more about my ACE project in my earlier post.

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