That's a great question, Vansh. First we have to discuss how water is purified. There are several different ways to purify water--that is, to take any salts, solids, microorganisms, or anything else you would not want to drink out of the water. One way is to filter it, or to pass it through a physical barrier which allows the water through, but holds most of the bad things back. Depending on the filter, some things in the water may be small enough to pass through, like salts or viruses.
Another way is to add chemicals, like chlorine or ozone, to the water, or bombard the water with ultraviolet radiation. These methods will kill microorganisms that could make you sick. This will make most water safe to drink, but will not remove large solids like dirt.
Another way to clean up water for drinking is to distill it, or to cause it to vaporize away from the other things contaminating it. In this process you heat up the water, causing it to form steam. The steam rises away from the other things in the water like salts or microorganisms (which do not vaporize). When the steam lands on something cold it will condense to form water again, but this water does not carry the same solids as the water before. If you can collect this water in a container like a bowl or bottle, it should be much cleaner than the original water, and hopefully safe to drink!
NOTE: If you try this with water from your kitchen sink, the filtered or distilled water will very likely be good to drink. However, if you try this with murky lake or pond water, I don't recommend drinking it after only one filtration or distillation!! Sometimes water can hold dangerous viruses that a filter will not remove, and some of the dirty water could splash during distillation, putting some microorganisms in your clean water.
We found a great website that shows how to make a filter that uses cotton, gravel and sand, and an empty plastic water bottle. Please visit Instructables.com to see how they made their simple water filter. This one would be very good for a school project!
We also tried making a water distillation system ourselves using a pot of boiling water on a stove, a large pot lid, a bowl, and a bag of ice. You assemble the system as in the figure below:
NOTE: If you try this with water from your kitchen sink, the filtered or distilled water will very likely be good to drink. However, if you try this with murky lake or pond water, I don't recommend drinking it after only one filtration or distillation!! Sometimes water can hold dangerous viruses that a filter will not remove, and some of the dirty water could splash during distillation, putting some microorganisms in your clean water.
We found a great website that shows how to make a filter that uses cotton, gravel and sand, and an empty plastic water bottle. Please visit Instructables.com to see how they made their simple water filter. This one would be very good for a school project!
We also tried making a water distillation system ourselves using a pot of boiling water on a stove, a large pot lid, a bowl, and a bag of ice. You assemble the system as in the figure below:
Put the pot on the stove to boil the water, place the lid on the top at an angle, so the lid slopes downward to the bowl. Put the bag of ice on top of the lid, and watch as clean water drips into the bowl!
We tried this, and it worked well! Please watch our YouTube video and see!
We tried this, and it worked well! Please watch our YouTube video and see!