The cleanup effort for a large oil spill could involve determining the thickness of the oil layer that is sitting on top of the ocean. Using methodology similar to the aluminum foil experiment, design an experiment that could test the thickness of an oil layer spilled over a small sample of water. Make sure to indicate what equipment and calculations you would need to use.
Answers
Answer:
Since the density of oil is lesser than water, it floats on the water surface when it leaks or spills (saltwater or freshwater). It is for this reason, that it is much easier to clean up an oil spill. It is easy to imagine the difficulty in cleaning up a spill if oil was denser than water, and as a result, formed a layer along the bottom of the seas instead of the surface!
Many major oil spills have taken place in recent years– the Exxon Valdez in 1989, the Prestige in 2002, and the Deepwater Horizon in 2010. Oil spills will continue to be a pressing problem and source of pollution as long as ships move most of the petroleum products around the world, and exploration of oil from oceanic resources is steadily on the rise.
Nevertheless, oil spills mostly end up occurring accidentally, and thus it becomes increasingly important to employ various cleanup methods for tacking the menace they could pose to the marine ecosystem.
There are different methodologies that can be adopted for the purpose of cleaning up oil spills.
Explanation:
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