29th September 2015
On Tuesday the 29th of September, Year 8 Had a talk in their science lesson about Hydrogeology which is the concept of water, and asking questions like, “If I build a road here, what will the consequences be on the water surrounding that particular road? Will this road increase the amount of pollution in the water?”
The talk was held by Dr Peter Johnston a Hydrogeologist he first talked to us about what qualifications he had, what GCSE’s he had and A levels and then touched briefly on what he did at university. What I gained from this part of the lesson is that if you would like to be in this profession you can be from any sort of scientific background as in Biology, Physics or Chemistry.
He started off talking about the water cycle, in particularly the groundwater which is the water that has been rained and then has been absorbed into the earth and settled lower down in the rock and he talked about how if even a small amount of oil got absorbed into the rock then that water would get polluted.
He then went on to talk about what projects he has been on. He gave some examples of pollution in groundwater, like how he had worked on high speed two (The rail line that will be built). He said that he worked on a part of the railway that was near a lake or marsh and this marsh housed endangered species and species that had scientific value so this marsh was protected and he checked that this marsh would not be damaged by the railway and he determined that it was not endangered by calculating distance and other factors. He also worked on a part of the Olympic stadium looking at which parts of the soil were very badly polluted and needed to be cleaned.
I have to thank Dr Johnston for coming to the school and standing up in front of our class and giving us valuable parts of information and giving us more detail of an very important part of science, the water cycle and I think Year 8 all enjoyed the presentation.
By Matthew, Year 8