Purpose: The purpose of this weeks experiment will be to see if it is possible to filter salt water, to make drinkable water, using filters created from objects around the house. The results of this experiment may yield useful information for those stranded on desert islands.
Hypothesis: To filtrate out the salt crystals, a filter with holes large enough for water molecules but smaller then salt crystals must be used. It is therefore they hypothesis of this experiment that using items collected from around the house, a filter with these qualifications will not be found, and therefore the filters will not work.
Equipment: Needed for this experiment are cups, a needle, plastic wrap, paper towels, printer paper, water and salt.
Procedure: The first step is to create the filters. For the plastic wrap, take the needle and poke 10 holes as small as possible into it. For the paper products, create circles with the paper, fold twice and open up to create a cup. The next step is to create a solution of salt water by pouring the salt into a cup of warm water and stirring. Next place to filter to be tested over a clean cup and pour the water into the filter. Allow an ample portion to be filtered and then taste to determing if salt remains in the filtered solution. Repeat for all filters and record results.
Observations:
| Filter to be tested | Observations |
| Plastic with small holes | Filtered water tasted salty |
| Paper Towel | Filtered water tasted salty |
| Printer paper | Filtered water tasted salty |
| Printer paper tripled up | Filtered water tasted salty |
Conclusion: It seems for the objects tested that the hypothesis holds true and the home filters could not get the job done. It is recommended however, if this experiment is to replicated that either sugar be used in place of salt or some other beverage be used as a "chaser", depending on the experimenter's faith in their filters. Unfortunantly, the results of this particular experiment provide very little useful information in the event that one is stranded on a desert isle. In the future Scientific AmeriKen experiments will test other purification apparatus constructed, and hopefully an answer will be developed for this most prevalent problem.