(3212) Pollution Dillution
Thomas Chan
Lakefield College

Abstract


Introduction

This project is about light pollution and what the affects are, and also ways that we can prevent it. Light pollution is also known as photo-pollution or luminous pollution, what this means is an excessive amount of obtrusive artificial light. The light comes from people s homes, offices or bill boards. An way to identify light pollution is by spotting a glowing area in the sky or not being able to see any dim or small stars.

There are many different reasons to do this project; some reasons are that once people know how much light pollution is affecting us we may stop using as much energy. Another reason is to see the harm we are doing to the nocturnal animals.

The purpose of this experiment is to find out how light pollution is affecting the visibility of the night sky. There are many questions that you could ask about this project, but a big one is; what negative effects does light pollution have on our city?

Hypothesis

If someone was to count the number of stars that they could see in a highly lighted are then they would not be able to see as many as they would if they were in a dark field.

My independent variable is the amount of light that there is in a city, and my dependent variable is the number of stars that can be seen. If someone were to go out on a clear night in the city and count the stars they would be able to see them with ease, right? Wrong, because of light pollution the amount of stars that you could count would be limited. What should be expected is that in a highly lighted area you should only be able to see a fewer stars that you could see in an area with almost no lights.

Conclusion

It can be concluded that the greater the distance travelled from an urban center the clearer the night sky becomes for viewing stars. Light pollution has a negative affect on our ability to see stars by the lights from urban and suburban areas escaping into the night sky and obstructing our ability to see stars.

In the data collected it is clear that in the rural, or control, trials you can see many more stars than in the urban and suburban areas. The reason is that in the control there were much less artificial light sources than in the other two areas. In the urban area 18% of the stars were visible that were in the control area. In the suburban area 46% of the stars were visible. This means that where there are less lights more stars are visible.

The results are correct because there are multiple trials for each area. Some areas that could be improved are; there could be more trials to ensure that the results would be more precise. This project could lead to better understanding of where the best areas are to star gaze.