The Stable and Swimming Pool: “Where Math Meets Science”

The Mitch Lab at Stanford researches organic chemical reaction pathways involved in treating water, especially disinfection byproducts (DBPs), which result from reactions between disinfectants (usually chlorine) and dissolved organic matter. My research project this summer was to assess exposure to DBPs through ingestion of chlorinated drinking water and swimming pool water. These DBPs result from the necessary disinfection process to make drinking water and recreational pools safe for public use, but unfortunately are themselves highly toxic byproducts of the disinfection process and are linked to cancer and asthma. In this mETP, algebra students will learn to read graphs, evaluate the point slope point of the line in terms of studies dealing how to reduce stable dust to protect horses from airborne particulates respiratory illnesses. Once we have an idea of measuring and preventing airborne particulates we will extend it to data involving human lungs and the effects of smoking. Our knowledge of particulate matter will then be used once again to understand how DBPs form in disinfected water. We will use our knowledge of concentration to evaluate reducing concentration of DPBs in pool water. The goal of these activities is to integrate chemistry and algebra, using science data, and linear relationships of a correlation as a means of describing algebraic phenomena in real world contexts. The conceptual backdrop for these various activities is the concept that matter is neither created nor destroyed. What is carried into the pool on our bodies washes into the pool. The same chemicals that protect us from fatal microbes also create dangerous organic molecules. The same dust that causes us to cough and develop asthma does the same to horses. Using our lungs as the delivery path for nicotine and cannabis also requires that we use them as a filter for other harmful smoke by products. Accounting for small particulate matter reinforces a larger lesson that nothing disappears and that many small microscopic things can be studied for the threat they pose.