- What is your essential question? What is the best answer to your question and why?
My essential question is: "What is the best way to maintain a commercial pool for public use?" My best answer to my essential question is: "Keeping the water chemically balanced." It requires more than just one process to maintain a pool. There's chemically balancing the water, using large filtration systems, and cleaning and maintaining the pool itself. The chemical balance of the water is the most important for a reason. The chemistry of water is very easily altered through means of human interaction. Every time a person enters and exits a pool, the water changes. The dyes in your shorts, the cologne you were wearing, your sweat, the detergent used to wash your clothes, the shampoo you use. The list goes on. Even though is might not seem like much coming from one person, some pools can be used by up to 2000 people in a single day, and that makes a difference. Without proper care, a lot of dangerous bi-products can be a result. On the other side of the spectrum, careful measurements and observations must be made to ensure the correct amount of every chemical is being used. Almost every chemical used to sanitate the water is harmful in high concentration. Too much Chlorine or Muriatic Acid can cause irritation of the skin and eyes or worse. This is the importance of keeping the water chemically balanced.
2. What process did you take to arrive at this answer?
Through research of how each method works and what each does to maintain a pool, I learned how delicate the process of chemically balancing the water was, as well as how devastating it can be if done improperly. As I have already mentioned, using too little of the required chemicals can result in the growth of algae and bacteria, while too much or those chemicals can cause irritations or other forms of physical harm.
3. What problems did you face? How did you resolve them?
Finding a mentor, finding time to earn mentorship hours, finding research, and independent component 2. Finding a mentor was the easiest problem to resolve. After a month and a half of silence my first "mentor" ceased contact with me, forcing me to revert to the topic I had started over the summer. The business I have been earning my hours at had no problem bringing me along to help out and learn their practice. The only problem was finding the time to do it. They work from 6am to 2 pm. I would have had to miss full days of school in order to do mentorship. All I had to do was sacrifice a few vacation days in order to overcome this issue. Research was by far the most difficult of all of my problems. I struggled up until this past weekend trying to gather all 50 pieces of research. Finally there is Independent Component 2. Pittman helped me find a free online class at MIT.
4. What are the two most significant sources you used to answer your essential question and why?
My two most significant sources are a book called: "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Pool Care, but You Didn't Know Where to Ask." and my internship at "Caliber Commercial Pools" with my mentors Joe Dumont and David (forgot his last name. I'll put it in after I interview him) The book was the ultimate beginners guide to pool care. It introduced me to all the topics I needed to research and was what helped me to decide on what became my three answers. My mentorship was what helped me to learn the skills of the trade and I learned a lot of valuable information while doing so.
5. What is your product and why?
My product is the possibility of employment with the company I have been interning at. I have acquired one week's worth of training and can now be trusted to be left at stops to do the required work by my self. I hope to use this to my advantage and possibly work toward full time employment.
