AMD//Coal Speaker

Today we were introduced to a speaker, Wil Taylor, and he talked to us about coal mining and different ways to filter out metals, like iron. To start out the presentation, Wil talked to us about his state park Jennings, and was he does to help and regulate his park. To kick off the coal mining topic he had a demonstration of one of our campers and simulated the role of being underground mining for coal with a game. The game consisted of a human life game board, us as the playing pieces, and tokens for the different amount of coal you could collect. To play you would read the card and move or do what ever the card told you. At the end you could have been the highest payed for your coal collection, or be dead from a mishap. Then we got to do some science experiments using two types of different water, one from a stream (A) and the other from mine drainage (B). We didn't know which was which, so using different tests (pH,Alkalinity, Iron test,etc.) we found the results of that Group A was the stream water, and B was the mine drainage. It was very interesting to continue our results to a farther level, such as filtering out the iron in sample B. Wil supplied the B sample with Hydrogen Peroxide and then Ammonia to recolor sample B. Then after a little, the iron settled to the bottom clumping it. This taught us the steps Jennings, the State Park, uses to filter their mine drainage.

Testing waters A and B with different tests