Furnace Brook Lab Report

               Furnace Brook Lab Report 

Introduction-The aim of the lab is to see how healthy the steam is by identifying the creatures that inhabit the stream. By moving rocks or plants from the stream to be caught in a screen door net.
 Research Question- How fast is the streams velocity? The independent variable is the measurements/calculations .while the dependent variable is the streams speed. What would be changed would depend on the group of people who undertakes this lab.

Hypothesis- I predict that through this lab we will be able to find out the streams velocity and much more. The reason I state this is because in order to find the calculations for velocity you would have to find time and distance of the stream.

Variable Identification:

Controlled Variable	Method to control the variable
-velocity -area -average float time	-gravity -measurement of the streams width and depth -have a timer to record how much time was needed to get from point A-point B

Experimental Setup : My group made there tests at two location. The first location was under a bridge near a sewage pipe. The second location was up the stream witch the stream was in a medium valley between two unnatural barriers that was made by large rocks either in the stream or on the sides. The materials we used macro-invertebrate identification key, a net ,stopwatch ,calculator ,pen/pencil ,clipboard , boots, and a meter stick. By exactly doing the calculations with the materials provided by us.

Procedure:
1)select a portion a rapidly moving body of water to conduct your studies
2)measure out a 40-ft section of the stream. Walk in a straight line across the width of the stream at the beginning.
3)measure the width of the stream.inches
4)use a meter stick to measure the stream depth at least at six different equidistant locations along the straight line of your stream segment.
5)convert the depths into FEET.
6)calculate the average stream depth.feet
7)calculate the area. Square feet
8)use the practice golf balls and a stopwatch to measure the float time of this stream segment. repeat five more times.seconds
9)calculate average float time.seconds
10)calculate stream velocity. Feet/seconds
11)calculate stream discharge. cubic feet per second
Data: All data collected were collected from the creek without outside interfearenc.one set of data is the number of a species found at both location. Another set of data is just calculations.
                                   location 1                                                                         location 2
species types 
stonefly nymphs               3                                                                                       2
midge larvae                     8                                                                                       20
scuds                                 4                                                                                       0
caldifly larvae                   1                                                                                       0

calculations-
    Area X Velocity = stream discharge  6.326X.5365=.3394 cubic feet per second                               Average depth X Width=Area   .417X15=6.326
distance / average float time=velocity   40 feet/2.146 seconds=.05363 feet/second

Results : mean of location one is 4 while locations two mean is 11.

Discussion: The trends people would be able to see with this data would be that the more cleaner the water is to pollution the more creatures that would live in the creek but with high pollution then there would be less species that were be able to live in the water.

Evaluation: The mistakes us humans would make when we are doing calculations, measuring ,stopping stopwatches, and the identification of species.

Conclusion: My data that I have gathered throughout this lab can support my hypothesis. As put in my calculations we had to find the value of velocity of the stream . In order for you to calculate the velocity, one needed to find the distance and the time. Time in this lab would be average float time. After we find time we would set up the equation as shown in my calculations of the lab and find a answer of .05363 feet/second.so in the end I personally feel that my hypothesis was good but you never know what is a good hypothesis without the data required to support the hypothesis . to end all you would need is strong data to support your hypothesis.

References – To the paper Inferring Water Quality.
                       To the paper of calculations
                       To the paper Macroinvertebrate Identification Key