Growing in Chlorine E Fair Projects

Chlorine science fair projects stun with results...

Name: Joel
Grade Level 7th

RESEARCH REPORT

Introduction
Without plants all life would cease to exist. That is why scientists must research what is harmful to plants. The soybean is a very important plant in agriculture in many counties. Chlorine can be very harmful to most plants including soybeans.

Plants
 Plants are important to every living thing. Plants provide many needed products including food, clothing, shelter and fuel. They provide jobs for people who grow them or sell them. They also provide lumber and other materials for homes, are used in medicines, and have even been used as currency. They also provide us with oxygen. Fossil fuels were once growing plants that have been transformed over millions of years.
 
Plants are capable of making their own food, especially sugar, like glucose.  The chemical equation for this is 6 H20 + 6 CO2 = C6H12O6 + 6 O2. This process is called photosynthesis, but it requires the energy of the sun and a special plant chemical called chlorophyll to occur.
 
Humans and animals only use a small percentage of all plants. Many are microscopic and live in the ocean. There are so many plants in the world many of them haven’t been discovered yet. So it would be impossible to list or even count every type of plant. Plants live all over the world, but most of them are in the ocean. Plants live in desserts, on mountains, in meadows, in forests, and even in the cities.
 
People who study plants are called botanists. Botanists do research that benefits agriculture.

Agriculture
 
Agriculture is the biggest and most important industry in the world. Half of the worlds’ workers are employed in agriculture. It made civilization possible.  Agriculture provides us with many, many things, including lots of food, clothing, paint, and jobs. One of the jobs it provides is farming.
 
Farming is the commercial use of agriculture to grow plants and animals for food, clothing and lumber. The products used to make clothing are cotton, silk, wool, jute, flax, and sisal.
 
The food farming provides is land animals, sea animals and plants. 
The land animals include hogs, turkeys, chickens, dairy cattle, beef cattle, goats, and sheep. The sea animals that farming provides are salmon, catfish, trout, oysters and other salt-water shellfish.
 
The plants farming provides are coco beans, radishes, sweet potatoes, potatoes, sorghum, oats, wheat, barley and rice. Some other plants are rye, millet, oil crops, almost every type of fruit, dry beans, grass, and corn. Other plants include sugar cane, sweet beats, tea, nuts, coffee, tobacco, honey, hay, and soybeans.

Legumes
Legumes are the second largest family of flowering plants. They get there name from the seed pods that grow off them. There are 14,000 to 17,000 different species of legumes. The main types of legumes are peas, nuts, peanuts, beans, clover, alfalfa and vetch. The sub classes’ legumes include trees, shrubs, herbs, climbing plants and flowers. Legumes are used to make oils, dyes, medicines and timber.

Legumes have a bacteria called rhizobia that live in growths on the roots. These bacteria take in nitrogen from the air and transfer it to the root system. This makes the legumes very valuable to farmers. Farmers often use legumes as “green manure”. This manure helps transform bad soil into usable soil.

Soybeans
Soybeans are very important to agriculture. They supply food for humans and animals. They also provide raw materials for farming. Soybeans are the third largest crop grown in the United States, second only to wheat and corn. More than 75 million acres in the U.S. is dedicated to the growth of soybeans. The United States grows about 40% of the worlds soybeans, growing two and a half billion bushels yearly. More than one third of this is exported to eastern Asia. Other important soybean growers are Brazil, Argentina, China and Ontario. The two states that produce the most soybeans are Illinois and Iowa.

The soybean is an annual. Meaning that it only lives for one year before it has to be replanted. Soybeans are usually planted in the spring. In six to eight weeks small purple or white flowers appear.
Soy has more protein than beef, fish, or eggs. A lot of people decide to eat soy instead of eggs, fish, beef, and chicken. This is because soy is 40% protein while beef, fish and eggs are only 18% protein. Soybeans provide food for humans, animals and raw materials. Soybeans are the largest source of vegetable oil in the world. Soy oil has almost no saturated fat and no cholesterol. Soybeans are in the same family as peas and are sometimes known as soy or soda. People in eastern Asia are the largest consumers of tofu. Tofu is made from soy curd.

Water Pollution
Most water pollution comes from the 400,000 manufacturing companies all around the U.S. They use gallons and gallons of water to wash out many different types of wastes. The water is then washed into the ground, lakes and oceans.

In 1998 the national water quality inventory stated that 45% of the U.S lakes, rivers, streams and ocean shores that were surveyed were polluted so much that you should’t drink it, swim in it, or even fish in it.

Some of the chemicals that were in the polluted lakes, rivers, streams and oceans were phosphates, mercury, asbestos, sulfur, sulfuric acid, nitrate and lead. There were also sodium compounds and petrol chemicals.  In 1986-1990 over 6000 injuries occurred because of chemicals in the water. Another potentially harmful chemical found in water pollution is chlorine.

Chlorine
Chlorine is very poisonous. Chlorine can cause irritation to the throat, nose, lungs and skin. If breathed in it can cause health problems. If a large amount of chlorine is consumed call poison control immediately. It also has a very unpleasant odor. In gas form it is explosive when combined with hydrogen.

Chlorine is also widely used to purify drinking water, since it kills bacteria. It is also used to create paint, petroleum products, medicines and cleaners. Chlorine is also used to make antifreeze, insecticides, paper and plastic.

The gas form of chlorine is made from treating metal sodium with hydrochloric acid. It creates a yellow-greenish gas. When this gas is compressed it creates the liquid form of chlorine. Today the gas is made from passing electric currents through sodium chloride in water. Then the gas is pressurized to form the liquid. In nature chlorine only exists in chloride compounds. Chloride occurs in seawater, salt lakes, and rock salt.

Pure chlorine gas was first created in 1774 by the Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele. Scheele treated hydrochloric acid with manganese dioxide and accidentally made chlorine. It wasn’t until 1810 that chlorine was named and identified as a chemical element by Sir Humphrey Davy. Davy named it for the Greek word “chloros” meaning greenish-yellow.

Summary
Soybeans are very important plants and are very important to agriculture. Chlorine is very dangerous to plants, animals and people. Water pollution is an ever-present global problem. If something is not done to reduce this problem then it will continue to threaten the environment and possibly the human existence.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank the following people for helping make my project possible:
∑ My parents for supporting me in all that I have done during this project. Also I would like to thanks them for helping handle the chlorine when I was mixing the solutions.
∑ Mr. Newkirk for explaining things to me when I didn’t understand them. Also for providing a workspace for my research and the tools I needed.
∑ Mrs. Helms for finding helpful facts for my research. Abstract