Cleaner Water with Sticks... Xylem Water Filtration Experiment

Have you ever seen how expensive water filters are? Who would have thought that one of the best ones is available for free? It even grows on trees!

I came across this article about an MIT scientist that was experimenting with the xylem of plants to filter out impurities in water. Here in the United States, clean drinking water is something that is everywhere, but in many parts of the world it is in short supply. Impure water still causes disease in millions of people every year, and the options to filter water can be expensive and hard to get. 

The scientist peeled back the bark of a protion of pine tree and affixed the cross section to a tube and began pumping water that was contaminated with tiny imputities through it. According to the research the xylem filtered out 99% of the impurities and bacteria!

Now a person does not want to risk drinking water that is not 100% pure, but it is an available and affordable method of filtration that has the potential to lead to even better filtration methods. There is a link to the video of the experiment below.

http://video.mit.edu/watch/water-filtration-using-plant-xylem-27183/