Team:TU Kaiserslautern/Education

Alongside laboratory work, we also wanted to focus on the educational aspect of our project. After all, the importance of increasing understanding of young people regarding the connection between wastewater treatment plants and micropollutants.

Wastewater Tour

As such we organized a lecture unit and created a lesson plan which included field trips to the local water department and the local wastewater treatment plant of Wauseon. This was an important part because being able to see how a wastewater treatment plant works has a different impact than just talking about it theoretically.

Fig. 1: Here students speak with Mike Short and tour the Wastewater Treatment Plant in Archbold, OH.

Fig. 2: Dan Avers provides a tour to the students at the Archbold Water Treatment facility in OH.

For this reason, we have also developed an experiment that the students could conduct over the course of five days. It motivates students to create their own filtration system, helping them understand the purification steps involved in wastewater treatment plants on a more individual scale. Additionally, they had to keep a laboratory journal for each day to enable a small entry into scientific work. They also were given a small exercise to reinforce the new vocabulary they learned during the lecture unit we prepared.

Fig. 3: Students designed and drew their own experimental water treatment system (find teaching resources below).

This part of the project was especially close to our hearts because educating younger generations is a critical part of environmental science and will be integral to protecting our planet for years to come.

Fig. 4: Students tested their water samples and regularly recorded observations as the experiment progressed (find teaching resources below).

Teaching Resources

You may freely use them for educational purposes.