Oil Spills! By: Sarah King

1. Oil Spills! By: Sarah King

2. What happens to oil after a spill? When an oil spill occurs, the oil floats to the top of the water because the oil is less dense than the water. Where does the Oil come from? The oil from and oil spill comes from underneath the Earth. It actually comes from underneath the layer of the Earth called the “mantle.”

3. How do oil spills occur? Oil spills could happen different ways… For example, in the BP oil spill a pipe that was under the water broke and let out all of the oil. In the Exxon oil spill the ship that was carrying the oil ran into a iceberg and the oil flowed out of the ship.

4. Clean up techniques: We used a technique called the boom, it was similar to a piece of rope that we used to surround the oil and try to get it to one spot. It did not work very well. Another thing we used were cotton balls, they were used as absorbers to soak up the oil, they also didn’t work very well, they soaked up mostly water. Also, we used pipettes and they worked as skimmers, we sucked up the oil from the water, this method did work. One other method we used to cleanup oil was using dish soap, mixing the water, oil, and dish soap together made it easier for animals to swim through the water.

5. Effects on animals from oil spills Even though people spent many hours cleaning animals, not all of these animals lived. It made it hard for these animals to breathe and swim. It is especially difficult for otters during oil spills. They usually store heat in their thick pelt, but with the oil it made it hard to because it didn’t allow the heat to be stored in the pelt.