Fran

By Fran Brittingham It is a bright, sunny Sunday afternoon in August, 1979. You are enjoying a country ride on your turquoise blue banana-seat Schwinn Sting Ray bike, cruising down a narrow, winding Worcester County road. Oh how serene the feeling of wind in your hair, how sweet the fragrance of honeysuckle, as you sing along to “Funkytown” on the boombox hanging from your monkey handlebars. Egrets, herons and red-winged blackbirds frolic among the cattails and loblolly pine. As euphoria increases and common sense decreases (a dangerous inverse proportion), you make a sudden turn to avoid two Delmarva fox squirrels chasing each other across the road. A few seconds later, you find yourself in a ditch, barely conscious, bleeding and aching all over. Your beloved Sting Ray looks worse than you, with its crumpled fenders and flat tire. The strong smell of hydrogen sulfide is helping to stimulate your gag reflex as soft marsh mud pillows your head and stagnant, green water rolls over you. A few days later, having suffered no major injuries, you experience flu-like symptoms. Your doctor diagnoses you with encephalitis. Three weeks later, as you lay on what feels like your death bed, wishing you were in school for the first time in your life, you begin to ponder the dangers of drainage ditches. For the most part they are mosquito infested, smelly bike and car magnets. There must be a better way to redirect rainwater. In the not too distant future these dangerous ditches start to be replaced by the more attractive drainage ponds. New construction sites and housing developments have replaced drainage ditches with ponds that look as though they were placed there by nature itself. Have you ever wondered what is going on chemically and biologically inside the drainage pond in your neighborhood? This year as a chemistry student, you will have the opportunity to work on a “real” scientific research project through ESPRIT and SU. We will start by taking samples from the 6 year-old Stephen Decatur High School drainage pond and analyzing them in the lab. We would like for you to acquire the GPS coordinates and a water sample (instructions for collection will be forthcoming ) from a drainage pond or ditch near you. We will then periodically analyze them in the lab and use EXCEL, ACCESS and GIS on the data we collect. We also have available to us an enormous quantity of data for comparison from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation on such bodies of water as the Bishopville Prong. We plan to chemically analyze our water samples over a two year period, minimally. From the data we collect, we will be looking for water quality and chemical changes that occur both naturally and artificially over time in drainage ditches and ponds. Just as ecosystems go through succession, as new species replace old species, accompanied by physical changes to the environment, drainage ponds and ditches go through chemical changes as well. We would like to observe and compare chemical similarities and differences in these ponds and ditches to discover if there is a pattern of succession for any or all of them. We hope you enjoy the opportunity to be involved in a real world environmental chemistry project. Perhaps some of you will be inspired by this experience to consider a career in chemistry. .
 * Case Study of Drainage Ditches and Ponds **