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How Your City Cleans Water
When you turn on your faucet, clean water comes out. But where did it come from? It probably started in a river, lake, or underground well. Then it went to a water treatment plant.
At the plant, the water goes through many stages:
1. Screening: Big metal screens catch sticks, leaves, and trash
2. Coagulation: Special chemicals are added that make tiny particles clump together into bigger chunks
3. Settling: The heavy clumps sink to the bottom of large tanks
4. Filtration: Water passes through sand and charcoal filters (just like yours!)
5. Disinfection: Chlorine or UV light kills any remaining bacteria
6. Storage: Clean water is stored in towers and tanks until you need it
Your filter experiment is step 4 in this process!