Summary

In this activity, students will answer questions while watching the video The World’s Smallest Water Treatment Plant Comes in a Packet from the Ingenious series produced by the American Chemical Society. Each episode investigates a different topic related to how leading-edge chemistry is taking on the world’s most urgent issues to advance everyone’s quality of life and secure our shared future. This episode investigates the global shortage in accessing clean water. Using a technology that was first developed to reuse dirty laundry water, scientists have developed a water treatment plant the size of a tea bag that contains a chemical triple-threat—it removes microbes, heavy metals, silt and dirt to produce clean, safe water.  

Grade Level

High School

Objectives

By the end of this activity, students should be able to:

• List common contaminants found in unclean water.
• Provide examples of how drinking water can become contaminated. 
• Describe the three stages of decontamination that occur when the water treatment packets are used to clean dirty water.
• Suggest scenarios when the water treatment packets would be beneficial to use.

Chemistry Topics

This activity supports students’ understanding of:

• Separating Mixtures
• Physical Properties
• Filtration
• Environmental Chemistry

Time

Teacher Preparation: minimal
Lesson: 10-20 minutes

Materials

• Ingenious Video: The World’s Smallest Water Treatment Plant Comes in a Packet
• Student Handout
• Computer and projector with volume, or student device to access video

Safety

• No specific safety precautions need to be observed for this activity.

Teacher Notes

• The Ingenious video series spotlights stories from the frontlines of chemistry research and development, where passionate innovators are stepping up to confront problems like pollution, overfishing, sustainability and personal safety.
• This video, The World’s Smallest Water Treatment Plant Comes in a Packet, investigates the global shortage in accessing clean water. About 800 million people worldwide (that’s almost one in ten—more than the population of the United States!) don’t have reliable access to clean drinking water. Using a technology first developed to reuse dirty laundry water, scientists have developed a water treatment plant the size of a tea bag that contains a chemical triple-threat—it removes microbes, heavy metals, silt and dirt to produce clean, safe water.  
• The running time of this video is about 7 minutes. As it is a short video and it moves quickly, you may want to show it twice, or instruct students to pause the video as needed on their own devices to ensure that they can record answers to all of the questions.
• The student questions are presented in sequential order in the video.
• An answer key has also been provided for teacher reference.
• The final questions are reflection-based and might be helpful in prompting a class discussion after students have a few minutes to answer them independently.
• The AACT classroom resource library offers a wide selection of teaching resources. Below are several select resources that could be used in combination with the topics highlighted in this video.
  • Chemistry Solutions Article: Water Sustainability: A Video Project and More
  • ChemMatters Magazine Article: Is this Water Recycled Sewage?
  • Activity: Sustainability
  • Lesson Plan: Clean-Up Pond Pollution