Student members of the UNL chapter of American Water Works Association/Water Environment Federation (AWWA/WEF) attended the annual World O! Water event on September 10, 2016. The World O! Water events aim to help inform the community about water pollution prevention.
UNL’s AWWA/WEF chapter sent four civil engineering students to the event: Darshan Barai, Yutian Lei, Shaobin Li and Rami Ziara. The students spent time educating attendees with demonstrations including a model car powered by the electrolysis of water into hydrogen and oxygen gases, Life Straw filtration systems and an interactive groundwater contamination model.
According to the students, the groundwater contamination model was the most effective at educating the children attending the event.
“We used blue-dyed water as the contaminated water and let the children use a hand pump to show how water and pollutants move through the soil,” said Li. “They loved it.”
Through this demonstration, the students are hoping to inform the public of the critical role groundwater plays in their lives.
“We ask the children where their water comes from, and they say ‘the rain.’ We ask them where the rain comes from, and they say, ‘the clouds’,” said Lei. “They don’t think about groundwater as being a part of their water system, but it is very important.”
For more information on World O! Water, see their website: http://www.worldowater.org/