Bintaro Lama

As part of grade 6's water unit, we visited Bintaro Lama Kampung and learnt how they purify their water.

We split into groups and visited 3 stations. My group's first station was 'water quality'. One way of showing how clear water is was to pour water into a thin cylinder with a cross or circle on the bottom. Then you look through the top and see how clearly you can view the cross or circle.

A way of getting rid of dirt in some water is to run it through a 'sand filter'. The sand filter that Bintaro Lama owned was a large barrel with layers of sand and gravel in it. When poured in the top of the barrel the water first had to seep through 45cm of fine sand. Proceeding that was 5cm of fine gravel and then 10cm of large gravel. Once water has seeped through the whole barrel it would come out the other end, with most of the dirt stuck in the sand or gravel.

The last station was a way of killing bacteria in water. The inhabitants of Bintaro Lama cleaned water bottles with soap and then rinsed them. The bottles were then filled with water and left on a roof of a house to be in full view of the sun's rays. All bacteria would burn and die after the water was left on the roof for 6 hours.

Lastly we learnt a hand-washing jingle before heading back to the buses. It was amazing to learn how many ways to clean water a simple kampung like Bintaro Lama has.