Math and Journalism collaborate to test school water
Shawnise King tests the pH level for water from the Building 6 water fountain.
Jun 1, 2021
The Journalism classroom worked with Ms. Douglas to test different pH levels of water around John Hopkins Middle School.
There were different types of water from around the school, including the water fountain, toilet and sink water and lastly Ms. Douglas’ turtle water. The water fountain for downstairs Building 6 was yellow for some reason.

Students dipped pH strips into the water to see what was the best to drink. Amazingly, the turtle water was somehow a 7, which is a perfect balance of acidic and basic. The tap water made the pH strip green.
Ms. Douglas had a paper to show what the colors meant, and green was drinkable but not ideal. Ms. Douglas also printed slips of paper to help us find the mean, median and mode of all the types of water.
Students were surprised that the turtle water was drinkable, since turtles are literally living in it. The toilet water made the test strip somewhere between yellow or green, so it was also drinkable.

Thankfully, the result of our special investigation was that all of the water sources at John Hopkins Middle School are drinkable. Now if we are trapped at school because of a hurricane or other reasons, we know we will have plenty of water to drink.