Oil Spill Solutions

Student Worksheet:
Engineer Your Own Oil Spill Solution

You are part of a team of engineers who have been given the challenge of first containing, and then cleaning up an oil spill.  You will have many materials available to you, but will have to come up with a strategy to remove as much oil as possible.
  
 Planning Stage
Meet as a team and discuss the problem you need to solve.  Then develop and agree on a plan for your containment system.  Next develop a plan for cleaning up the oil you have contained.  You may have to consider stages or steps you might take and determine which order you will execute different steps.  You have been provided with many items you may use for your system. You don't need to use all the items, and should only use those that you think will work the best. Write a description of your containment and clean-up systems in the boxes below.  Draw a sketch of what you plan to do.  Be sure to indicate the materials you anticipate using. Present your design to the class. You may choose to revise your teams' plan after you receive feedback from class.  

Containment System

Materials Required:

	Clean-up System

Materials Required:
	
 Oil Spill Solutions

Student Worksheet (continued): 

 Preparation Phase

Gather all the materials you plan to use, and consider how you will use them and what steps might need to be taken.  You may need to ask for additional materials during this phase as you consider how much oil you have to clean-up!

 Testing Phase

Each team will have a chance to test their containment and clean-up systems on a similar "oil spill." Be sure to watch all the methods and observe the different approaches your classmates have "engineered."  See which procedures worked best -- it may be that certain parts of a procedure worked better than others. Each system will be scored on the following scale to determine success.

Water is completely clear of all oil	About a quarter of the oil remains	About half of the oil remains	About three quarters of the oil remains	No change, water is as oily as at the beginning of the challenge	
0	1	2	3	4	

 Evaluation Phase
Evaluate your team's results, complete the evaluation worksheet, and present your findings to the class.

 Oil Spill Solutions

Student Evaluation Sheet 

1. Did you succeed in removing all the oil from the "oil spill?"  What was the score your team achieved?    

2.  If your system failed, what do you think went wrong?

3. Describe a system another student team created that you thought worked well.  What did you do differently?  

4. How did your decisions on engineering trade-offs differ from that team?  What goals or priorities for your system did you put above others?

5. Did you decide to revise your plan while actually doing the containment or clean-up?  Why?  How?

6. Why might a team of environmental engineers change their planned approach to an oil spill clean-up once they arrived on the site?  Do you think it is common that professionals change their plans while on the job?

 Oil Spill Solutions

Student Evaluation Form (continued): 

7. If you had to do it all over again, how would your team have improved your containment system? Why?

8. If you had to do it all over again, how would your team have improved your clean-up system? Why?

9.  Do you think that experience with prior oil spills would make a team of engineers more able to address the next unexpected one?

10.  Now that you have learned about the different trade-offs engineers must factor into a product or system, if you were designing a new rail-based oil transportation system, what considerations would you have to balance in your new design (consider costs, environmental issues, public health, speed of transport)?

11.  What other materials do you think would have helped speed up your containment or clean-up?