Assignment

Your own swimming pool in your back yard!  Cool!  But…you must clean your swimming pool and this means you have to be able to empty it.  With a middle-sized swimming pool this can take a whole day!

This seems to Professor Pregunta, the main character in this assignment way too long.  He wants to buy a swimming pool and while shopping around, he asks the pool supplier how long before certain types of swimming pools are emptied.  Because the pool supplier can’t give an answer professor Pregunta decides to do some research himself.  He has gone to his neighbors to ask for information about their pools, and he wants you to find out why one swimming pool empties faster than another.  This information is available in the meeting room in a help file.

In order to give Professor Pregunta good advice you must understand what happens when a swimming pool empties.  Naturally the water level drops.  But how quickly?  What is the influence of the swimming pool and drainpipe diameters on the outflow rate?

To answer these questions you should experiment with a simulation of a water tank (a sort of mini-swimming pool).  At the beginning of each experiment fill the tank to the top, make sure the tap is closed, and drain the tank so that there is no more water in it.  Do systematic experimentation, so that you can see what influence the above mentioned factors have on the outflow. 

Armed with this knowledge you can make a model of the relationships between the key factors of the water tank.  With this model, you can advise Professor Pregunta about which kind of swimming pool he wants to buy.  You’ll also have to develop a report which explains your model, and how you developed it. In this way, Professor Pregunta can decide how accurately your model predicts the time it takes to empty a pool.

Use the process coordinator to assist you in planning and keeping track of your inquiry activities by taking notes. Remember! Good scientists plan by setting goals, and then monitor these goals by keeping accurate and up to date notes while they conduct their investigations, and use these notes to assess their own understanding. You can use the notes you make in the process coordinator to write your lab report as well.