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When an elementary school teacher calls in sick to work, she finds out that she is not the only one who will be missing school that day.  Children from her fifth grade class have also become ill and parents are calling to report the absences. The concerned principal of the school finds out the fifth grade class had a field trip to one of the local parks the day before. The case shows the areas visited by the class and provides discussion between the principal and a physician that teaches the readers about water quality and EPA standards for bacteria levels in recreational water. The case has an optional lab component that provides the theory for three methods that can be used to conduct microbial water analyses.  Procedures are included for teachers to lead a lab activity to test water to identify which location in the park caused the illness. This case study and accompanying laboratory activity are recommended for an environmental engineering course or a lower level science course.

Water is essentially everywhere in our world, and the average human is composed of between 55 and 60% water. So what role does water play in our bodies, and how much do we actually need to drink to stay healthy? Mia Nacamulli details the health benefits of hydration.

Topic: Turgor Pressure Why does a touch me not plant close? Hey!! Don't touch that plant. You will get scared. See, you did not listen to me. Don't worry!! Nothing to be scared about. Let me tell you more about this plant. This plant is called the Mimosa Pudica plant. Another name for it is "Touch Me Not" Plant. When anyone touches this plant, it closes its leaves with the help of pulvini. Pulvini are present at the base of each leaflet. They consist of cells filled with water. This water applies pressure against the walls of the cells. This pressure is called the turgor pressure. It helps the leaflets to stand upright. Now, when we touch a leaflet of the touch me not plant, specific parts of the plant release certain chemicals. These chemicals cause the cells in the pulvini to lose water. When water is lost, there is no more turgor pressure. As a result, the cells collapse, resulting in the closing of leaflets.

A team of Indian biologists has demonstrated that a key component of the water buffalo genome can be manipulated to produce foreign proteins in the buffalo's milk (J. Biotechnol. 2015, DOI:10.1016/j.jbiotec.2015.02.001). The findings suggest the possibility of modifying the genetic material of water buffalo-that is, creating transgenic buffalo-to produce protein drugs, says team member Subeer S. Majumdar, of the National Institute of Immunology, in New Delhi.

In July, the AP reported that its first round of tests showed disease-causing viruses directly linked to human sewage at levels up to 1.7 million times what would be considered highly alarming in the U.S. or Europe. Experts said athletes were competing in the viral equivalent of raw sewage and exposure to dangerous health risks almost certain. The results sent shockwaves through the global athletic community, with sports officials pledging to do their own viral testing to ensure the waters were safe for competition in next year's games. Those promises took on further urgency in August, after pre-Olympic rowing and sailing events in Rio led to illnesses among athletes nearly double the acceptable limit in the U.S. for swimmers in recreational waters.

activities about driking water for grades 9-12

KHULNA, Bangladesh - Flooding is a frequent problem in Chandipur, a village in southwestern Bangladesh. When storms increase the water levels of surrounding rivers, salty water pours in. As a result, farmland throughout the village is ruined, and growing crops becomes harder. The situation became particularly bad after Cyclone Aila hit in 2009. The storm sent salty water surging onto farmlands and it soaked into the soil. After 2009, vegetable crops in Chandipur produced small harvests. Some failed completely.

Explore some properties of water with the Amoeba Sisters! It's all about those hydrogen bonds. Terms discussed include adhesion, cohesion, surface tension, specific heat - all made possible by those amazing hydrogen bonds.

Deadly bacteria are spreading through the oceans as waters warm up, and are increasing infection risks, according to a new study. Multiple species of rod-shaped Vibrio bacteria live in the world's oceans, and their populations rise and fall based on many different variables, changing the likelihood of making people sick.

The groundwater is cold, deep and twice as salty as seawater, but the water streaming out of Blood Falls, which teems with microbes, tells us that it is unlikely to be lifeless. "The fact that the [water] contains metabolically active micro-organisms that appear to be suited to life in a dark, cold brine supports the idea that life should persist throughout the subsurface," says Mikucki. If so, those microbes could be fuelling life in the Southern Ocean. By breaking down iron-containing rocks they might be dumping as much as 170 million kilograms of iron into the ocean each year, according to the researchers' estimates, helping to explain why marine productivity is seasonally very high near to the coast.

This case study is used to teach undergraduate students about hydraulic fracturing (hydrofracking), a controversial method for extracting methane from shale. The controversy arises from claims that chemicals used in the fracking process and the methane itself find their way into drinking water and are also sometimes found at dangerous levels in the air. The case study begins in a college chemistry class where a student inquires about a news item he saw about residents setting their tap water on fire. The instructor uses this as an opportunity for the students to research hydrofracking and natural gas, and she then integrate these topics into their present study of isotopes. The class first examines what isotopes are by using a guided inquiry based activity. The students then learn how mass spectrometry, which uses the principles just learned about isotopes, is employed to determine the source of methane in contaminated wells. This case study is designed for freshman chemistry students and students in environmental studies.

And as the El Nino weather system has been storming across the Pacific this season, it has stirred up ocean waters enough to cool down the original Blob off of Alaska, but at the same time helped give birth to what has been nicknamed the "Son of Blob" off the coast of Southern California. The still-warmer Alaskan waters, and Son of Blob sector are expected to continue to magnify the El Nino effect for months to come, according to Weather Underground's "Blob Watch" blog.

This case study presents a realistic example of drinking water contamination within a fictional local community and leads students through an abbreviated human health risk assessment. Students are provided background information about the extent of the contamination and a description of the contaminated site and are then required to calculate both the cancer and non-cancer risks to the community. This exercise is appropriate for an environmental toxicology or environmental risk assessment course. It works well after a lecture on the basics of risk assessment including how to calculate exposure intakes and risk estimates.

Why do your fingers and toes get wrinkly when they've been in the water too long? Short answer: Your nerves. Longer answer: Evolution. Hosted by: Michael Aranda

TeachUNICEF is a portfolio of free global education resources. Resources cover grades PK-12, are interdisciplinary (social studies, science, math, English/language arts, foreign/world languages), and align with standards. The lesson plans, stories, and multimedia cover topics ranging from the Millennium Development Goals to Water and Sanitation. Our mission is to support and create well-informed global citizens who understand interconnectedness, respect and value diversity, have the ability to challenge injustice and inequities and take action in personally meaningful ways. We hope that in providing engaging and academically rich materials that offer multiple voices, we can encourage the exploration of critical global issues while presenting opportunities to take action.

The heavy impact on the environment of meat production was known but the research shows a new scale and scope of damage, particularly for beef. The popular red meat requires 28 times more land to produce than pork or chicken, 11 times more water and results in five times more climate-warming emissions. When compared to staples like potatoes, wheat, and rice, the impact of beef per calorie is even more extreme, requiring 160 times more land and producing 11 times more greenhouse gases.

Topic: Surface Tension Why are drops spherical? Naahhh!!! It is because of surface tension. Surface tension is the property of liquids by which surface molecules of a liquid try to hold the liquid together by acquiring minimum surface area and acting like a stretched membrane. Alright!! I'll explain!! Inside a drop, each water molecule is pulled with a force by its neighboring molecules. As these forces are equal and opposite, they get neutralized. However, the molecule present at the surface is not attracted outwards. It is attracted only inwards and sideways. Sideways forces get neutralized. But because of the inward force, each surface molecule contracts to form a shape that has minimum surface area which is a sphere.

5 minute video: The evolution of whales has been a mystery. How did a large, big-brained mammal -- air-breathing, warm-blooded, giving birth to live young -- come to live entirely in water, when mammals evolved on land?

Dubilier is hardly alone in her plight. A heaping teaspoon of soil or a shot of ocean water may contain as many as one million bacterial species. Many of them are potential gold mines of chemicals and metabolites with medicinal, engineering, and energy applications. But when researchers have tried to culture these microbes in the lab, only a minority of cells form colonies. Clearly, nutrients, a carbon source, and time are usually not enough to coax bacteria isolated from the wild to grow in a laboratory setting. So what's the missing ingredient?

NPR's Jason Beaubien explains cholera, a deadly disease spread through water contaminated with sewage, in under two minutes.