Testing Water Quality Flashcards

1️⃣ Familiarise yourself with the flashcards:

Look through all the flashcards to see what's on both sides.
Make sure you understand the information on each card. If something's unclear, click the link to the revision notes at the bottom of the page for more details.

2️⃣ Test yourself:

Look at the question or prompt on each card and try to remember the answer before flipping it over.
Check the answer and make a note of any cards you find challenging and need to go over more.

3️⃣ Consistently Review and Practice:

Use spaced repetition: spend more time on the cards you struggle with and go over them more often.
Regularly review all the flashcards to help you better understand and retain the information over time.

Note: We may include questions that have multiple correct answers. It's useful to remember specific examples to understand these concepts better.

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What do scientists mean by ‘water quality’?

Water quality is how clean and safe water is, based on what is dissolved in it and any microbes in it.

Potable water is water that is safe to drink because it has low levels of dissolved salts and harmful microbes.

We check the amount of dissolved salts and the number of harmful microbes.

You can add universal indicator and match the colour to a pH chart, or use a pH probe and meter.

A pH near 7 is almost neutral, so the water does not taste very sour or bitter and is less likely to damage pipes or teeth.

Weigh a dry dish, add a known volume of water, heat it until all the water has gone, then weigh the dish again to find the mass of the solid left.

It shows the water had no dissolved solids, so it was pure water.

Add the same volume of soap solution to each sample, shake, and see which needs more soap to make a lasting lather; that one is harder.

They spread a small volume of the water onto nutrient agar in a Petri dish, incubate it, then count the colonies that grow.

Water can look clear but still contain dissolved salts or harmful microbes that you cannot see, so it must be tested.