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Spring 2002
Letters of Introduction
Mason County Eastern High School
Our school is in a small village
called Custer which is located in Michigan, it is about 15 miles east of
Ludington. The school name is Mason County Eastern High School. It is
located in Mason County, hence the school’s name. Our community is the
home to a number of family farms. As a matter of fact, you can see one
farm from the school. The elevation level in Custer is 698 feet or
212.7504 meters above sea level. Our latitude is 43.952’ N and our
longitude is 86.219’ W. Mr. Shoup’s applied science class includes
students from grades 10 through 12. This class is mainly project
orientated, we have a
lot of research projects that we have done this year. Our school has a lot
of sports teams including: Girls and boys basketball, cross-country, track
and field, softball, baseball, cheerleading and volleyball. Which are all
really good programs. We just added pole vault to our track team this year
after not having it for a number of years. Our softball team won the
Division IV State Championship last summer. |
WWP Community Middle School
| Community Middle School is located in
Plainsboro, NJ, just 2 miles from Princeton University. Our school
has 1000 students in grades 6, 7, 8. Latitude is 40N and Longitude is 74W,
located in the Hightstown Quad on the USGS Topo Map. Our altitude is 80
feet above sea level, hence the name - Plainsboro. Our middle school
students are testing the water behind the school to check its chemical and
physical characteristics. Since NJ is currently experiencing a severe
drought, it is an opportune time to learn more about the health of this
stream. The playing fields surrounding the school are very popular with
Canadian geese, so the students hypothesized that the large goose
population would pollute the water with bacteria. The stream is thought to
be relatively healthy, and the students are anxious to collect data to
test their hypothesis. |
Felix Varela Senior High School -
Ms. Escobar
Greeting from Sunny Miami,
Saludos desde Miami la cuidad del Sol,
Felix Varela Senior High School is located in unincorporated Miami-Dade
County. Our school is located at latitude 25:40:36.912 N and longitude
80:26:32.345 W in the subdivision of West Kendall know as the Hammocks.
Our school is built on land that was traditionally a wetland area. The
school is only two years old and has students in grades 9-11. It was built
for 2,600 students and now houses 3,700. Next year we will have 9-12
grades and expect to reach an enrollment of 5,000. Where the kids will go
nobody knows.
We are ninth grade students taking a BCC Earth and Space course. We are in
the BCC (bilingual content curriculum) course because we are new to the
United States and are learning English our first language or home language
is Spanish. We collectively represent the countries of Argentina,
Colombia, Chile, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua,
Peru, Spain, and Venezuela making our class very diverse in culture and
dialects. We will be testing water samples from a nearby canal that
borders the entire perimeter of Everglades National Park. This park is
undergoing many efforts to restore the quality, quantity and timing of the
water flow that all South Floridians depend on.
Three of our classes will monitor water quality at three different stops
along the perimeter. The areas around canal L-31 are greatly impacted by
humans and it is the consensus of all three classes that the water test
will indicate poor water quality. We look forward to sharing our findings
with you. |
Felix Varela Senior High School - Ms. Casal
May 8, 2002
Ladies and Gentlemen:
We are currently students attending Felix Varela Senior High School. The
school has been open for two years and at this time have freshmen,
sophomores, and juniors. The mascot that represents our pride is the
viper. Here are Felix Varela, we have an extensive curriculum in which we
offer great courses, electives, and academies for different careers that
our students choose to pursue. The environment is pleasant and we have a
multicultural student body that includes over fifty different
nationalities.
Felix Varela Senior High is located in the Hammocks. The Hammocks is a
single-family home community that has a diverse population and is
extremely peaceful. Our community offers many seasonal activities for its
members, such as the celebration of the independence of the United States
in July and the haunted house in October.
Attending the chemistry class this year, which consists of a universal
environment that totals approximately forty hard working students in each
class and most of which are dedicated, the experience and knowledge has
further grown and changed our views on life. Teresa Casal, the head
coordinator and teacher of Chemistry at Felix Varela Senior High School,
Region VI, teaches this class.
Our classroom’s environment is warm and comfortable as well as being
exciting. Each of the students in this class works hard with each other to
complete various classroom activities such as labs and educational
projects. For instance, some of the activities that have taken place are:
“The flame test lab” and “The construction of a hot air balloon.”
Our school is located in the South of Florida where there is a remarkable
tropical climate that lends itself to agriculture. Most of the vegetation
is grown in Homestead where all the farming is done. In this area there
are many fair beaches, which are a popular tourist attraction. We are also
located near the Everglades National Park, which is a land with an
extensive amount of cypress swamps, hardwood hammocks, saw grass prairies,
and pinelands. It is a subtropical preserve that contains a variety of
plants and animals. The plant life is both temperate and tropical and
there is a wide variety of birds inhabiting this area. Such birds include
the great blue heron, the wood stork, and egrets. It is the only place in
the world where alligators and crocodiles coexist.
Although this land is filled with animal and plant life it has suffered
many damages. For more than a decade people have questioned how it will be
repaired. The Everglades has been reduced to half its original size due to
the construction of new homes. This has caused many of the species to be
added to the endangered list. The purpose of this water restoration
project is to refill the beauty and uniqueness of this preserve. This
project is said to be the most expensive ecosystem restoration project
ever. The plan calls for many of the canals to be refilled. Much water
retention must be torn down along with building marshes to filter water.
Approximately, 1.6 billion gallons of water will be stored.
Thank you for your time and we hope that this letter has been
informational and helpful in explaining “The Global Water Sampling
Project.” We hope to let others view what the real situation we’re all
victims of, and take further action.
Sincerely,
Students of Chemistry at FVSH |
Rowan County High School
Rowan County High School is located in the hills of
Eastern Kentucky. Rowan County is the home of Morehead State University.
We are fortunate enough to have an extensive watershed that includes many
wetland areas and streams that run into the Licking River and Cave Run
Lake. The Licking River then merges with the Ohio River, which is located
approximately 75 miles North of Rowan County.
The Science Club at Rowan County High School will be involved in testing
the water from a creek on Bullfork Rd. (N 37o00.000’, W
084o22.500'). Due to the livestock located along the creek, students
hypothesize that coliform levels will be high. Our club consists of
22 students, grades 9-12. The club is mostly involved in community service
programs such as the Earth Day Cleanup and Adopt-a-Highway Program. We are
very excited to be part of this water testing program and are looking
forward to reading the results from other schools around the globe.
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Louise R. Johnson Middle School
Louise R. Johnson Middle school is a 6-8 magnet middle
school located in Bradenton Florida. We are about 12 miles from the Gulf
of Mexico just south of Tampa Bay. Our school population is diverse. We
have been doing water testing of our schools retention pond for 6 years
and also been testing local area rivers. This year our focus was the
Manatee River Watershed. About 100 8th grade students were involved in
this project. A summary of our project follows.
The Manatee River Project was developed to provide students the
opportunity to be involved in scientific research that is educational,
career oriented, and would benefit the environment as well as the
community. As part of this project students learned about the Manatee
River watershed and the importance of protecting it. They also learned how
to conduct water quality tests that would evaluate the water at different
locations. The study included a comprehensive water analysis that tested
for various parameters such as temperature, dissolved oxygen, ammonia,
phosphate, pH, salinity, turbidity, nitrates, and alkalinity. The three
locations chosen for testing were DeSoto National Memorial( 27 degrees
31'25'' North Lat and 82 degrees 38.48 West Long) which
is at the mouth of the river, Lake Manatee (27 degrees 28'30'' Lat and 82
degrees 21'34''long)the source of drinking water for residents of Manatee
County and Rye Wilderness Park (27 degrees 30'48'' lat and 82 degrees
22'15'' long) which is between the other locations. The funding for this
project was provided by Southwest Florida Water Management District
through their SPLASH mini-grant program. Experts who provided technical
assistance were from the Manatee County Environmental Management
Department. |
Gwynn Park Middle School
The name of our school is Gwynn Park
Middle. It is located in Brandywine, which is in Prince George's County,
Maryland. Gwynn Park Middle School is a Science, Math, and
Technology School under the Magnet Program in the county. Our mascot is
the 'yellow jacket'. Our principal is Ms. Janice Briscoe. Our school is
always about the business of education which is why we have taken this
project very serious.
Our community is much like the country, meaning it is surrounded by trees
and is mainly flat land. In the state of Maryland, there are many rivers.
Two of the most well known rivers in our vicinity are the Patuxent and
Potomac Rivers. One of the most important bodies of water in the North to
mid eastern states is the Chesapeake Bay. Our community has tried and done
several things to protect the Bay. We believe that cleaning our water is
vital to the well being of the environment.
For our hypothesis, we predict that most of the water that is consumed by
humans will have data that is similar because all human beings need the
same kind of water to survive. |
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