Every spring and every fall, like clockwork, Oxford Middle School’s sixth-graders leave the comfortable confines of their classrooms to get a little wet and a little dirty in the great outdoors, all in the name of science.
Last Wednesday, students spent the day conducting water quality tests on samples obtained from nearby Parker Lake.
The sixth-graders tested for phosphates, nitrates and dissolved oxygen. They also tested the pH level and turbidity, which refers to how clear the water is.
The greater the amount of total suspended solids in the water, the murkier it appears and the higher the turbidity. Turbidity is considered a good measure of the quality of water.
But these budding young scientists didn’t just test the water, they used magnifying glasses, tweezers and Petri dishes to search the samples for tiny organisms, which were then identified and cataloged.