Chemistry: Is it safe to drink?

Age: 11–14
Time required: lesson 50 minutes

A hurricane has left the school community trapped without access to clean drinking water. Can students create a water filtration system in time?

This lesson reinforces the importance of water supply for everyday life and in a disaster scenario. Students will discuss how to identify dangerous water and the process of purification – reviewing real-world examples from Army disaster relief – before accepting their challenge to use scientific equipment to purify “dirty water” in a race against time.

With a supporting film, the Is it Safe to Drink? resource is a classroom-based Chemistry lesson which will open your students’ eyes to the applications of their learning in a real-world scenario.