Yesterday I had a surprisingly very productive day.  The filter I had receieved in the mail was accidentally broken, so I had to figure out what to do before a new one came.  The answer was literally lying right in front of me.  All over the floor were these black particles.  At first I was alarmed thinking some toxic chemical was scattered all over the floor, but then I realized that it must be perfectly harmless if it were part of a water filter.  Thankfully, about half of a cup of the carbon was resting peacefully in an unbroken section of the clay.  I was able to gather those particles up to use for experiments.

Initial observations: The activated carbon is black in color.  It has no odor, and feels like sand.  After doing some research I learned that hospitals sometimes use it with patients who have overdosed on something (mostly drugs) because it absorbs foreign contaminents (like the bacteria in contaminated water).  I tried a little pinch of it, and discovered that it had no taste and was very crunchy.  The feeling was like getting a faceful of sand at the beach.

Experiments:  I was able to perform four different experiments.  The first thing I did to the carbon was attempt to burn it.  I stress the word attempt here because this did not work out very well.  Absolutely nothing happened when a flame was submerged into the particles.  This was somewhat of a disappointment, but I kept experimenting.  The next thing I did was mix a little bit of water into the particles, and then I froze it.  I was hoping that this would ellicit some sort of reaction, but nothing unusual happened.  Next, I gathered a cup of water from a dirty puddle outside and tried to clean it using the carbon.    I cut a whole at the bottom of a plastic cup and then lined it with a paper towel.  I then poured a good amount of the remaining carbon on top of the paper towel.  The first time I poured the puddle into the cup, the water came out just as dirty on the other side.  I then put a cloth liner before the graphene before pouring in the puddle a sceond time.  This seemed to help the cleaning process tremendously as the water came out pretty clear on the other side.  This gave me hope for the outcome of the water in the filter I make.  The final experiment I did was to add red food coloring to the activated carbon.  I was curious to see if the carbon would absorb the red color as well.  It might have done so slightly, but nothing really changed on the paper towel.  I would have liked to have done more experiments to the activated carbon, (boil it, pressurize it, send eletric waves through it, etc.) but this was all I had time for.