Worksheet Grade 7 Science

Fernvale Middle School Leak Hunt: Drips, Flow Rates, and Waste

A grade 7 worksheet in which students track dripping faucets and showerhead flow at a fictional school and use proportions to total yearly water waste.

Grade: Grade 7
Subject: Science
Material: Worksheet
Time: 40 min
Prep: No prep
Materials: None

Standards

MS-ESS3-3 NGSS

Apply scientific principles to design a method for monitoring and minimizing a human impact on the environment.

How this material aligns: Items 1 through 7 have students measure and total a school's water waste, the kind of monitoring evidence this standard asks students to use when minimizing a human impact.

All materials for MS-ESS3-3 →

7.RP.A.3 Common Core Math

Use proportional relationships to solve multistep ratio and percent problems. Examples: simple interest, tax, markups and markdowns, gratuities and commissions, fees, percent increase and decrease, percent error.

How this material aligns: Items 2 and 6 are multistep percent problems, the percent of faucets leaking and the percent flow a low-flow head saves, while items 1, 3, and 5 apply unit rates to scale and compare water use.

All materials for 7.RP.A.3 →

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This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely, without attribution. Updated 2026-07-23.

Objectives

Students will use a unit rate to scale a single faucet's yearly waste to many faucets.
Students will calculate what percent of fixtures leak and what percent a low-flow head saves.
Students will explain why small, steady leaks add up to large yearly totals.

Vocabulary

Flow rate: Flow rate measures how much water moves past a point in a certain amount of time, like gallons per minute through a garden hose. Bigger pipes and stronger pushes give bigger flow rates.

Also: conservation, leak, unit rate

Teacher overview

A single faucet dripping about once per second can waste more than 3,000 gallons of water in a year, according to EPA WaterSense, though the total depends on the size of the drips. Across the country, leaks in the average household waste about 9,400 gallons a year. This worksheet turns a school leak hunt into practice with unit rates and percents. Watch for a common error: a "small" drip feels like a small loss, so students underestimate the yearly total until they scale the rate up with multiplication.

Fernvale Middle School Leak Hunt: Drips, Flow Rates, and Waste — Grade 7 Science

Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Worksheet

Fernvale Middle School has 40 faucets. During a leak hunt, the custodian finds 6 of them dripping about once per second. Use these known values:

EPA WaterSense says one faucet dripping once per second can waste more than 3,000 gallons per year. Use 3,000 gallons per year for each dripping faucet.
A standard showerhead flows at 2.5 gallons per minute (gpm).
A WaterSense showerhead flows at 2.0 gpm.

If one dripping faucet wastes 3,000 gallons per year, how many gallons per year do all 6 dripping faucets waste together?
What percent of the school's 40 faucets are dripping? Show your work.
One dripping faucet wastes 3,000 gallons per year. About how many gallons is that per day? Divide by 365 and round to the nearest tenth.
A gym shower with a standard head flows at 2.5 gpm. How many gallons does an 8-minute shower use?
A WaterSense head flows at 2.0 gpm. How many gallons does the same 8-minute shower use, and how many gallons does it save compared with the 2.5 gpm head?
Going from 2.5 gpm to 2.0 gpm is what percent reduction in flow? Round to the nearest whole percent.
If the school fixes all 6 dripping faucets, it saves the waste from item 1 every year. How many gallons would that save over 3 years?
Explain why 6 slow drips can waste thousands of gallons even though each drip is only a tiny amount of water.
Name one step, other than fixing drips, that the school could take to cut its water use, and explain how it would help.

From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.

Answer Key

Answer: 18,000 gallons per year. 6 faucets x 3,000 gallons each = 18,000 gallons per year.
Answer: 15 percent. 6 leaking out of 40 total is 6 / 40 = 0.15, which is 15%.
Answer: about 8.2 gallons per day. 3,000 / 365 = 8.219..., which rounds to 8.2 gallons per day.
Answer: 20 gallons. 2.5 gpm x 8 minutes = 20 gallons.
Answer: 16 gallons, saving 4 gallons. 2.0 gpm x 8 minutes = 16 gallons; 20 - 16 = 4 gallons saved.
Answer: 20 percent. The flow drops by 2.5 - 2.0 = 0.5 gallons per minute; then 0.5 / 2.5 = 0.20, which is 20%.
Answer: 54,000 gallons. 18,000 gallons per year x 3 years = 54,000 gallons.
Answer: Each drip is tiny, but the drips never stop, so the small loss repeats thousands of times a day. Multiplying a small steady rate by a whole year gives a large total.
Answer: Accept any reasonable answer, such as installing low-flow showerheads or faucet aerators, turning off taps while washing hands, or reporting running toilets, with a brief explanation of the savings.

Differentiation

Support

Provide a filled-in rate strip showing 1 faucet = 3,000 gallons per year, 2 faucets = 6,000, and so on, so students see the pattern before item 1. Allow a calculator for items 3, 5, and 6, and let students skip item 7 if time runs short.

Extension

Ask students to estimate how many gallons the whole school could save in a year by switching every showerhead to a WaterSense model, stating any assumption they make about the number of showers per day and showing their reasoning.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "drip," "leak," "flow rate," and "per year" with a short demonstration of a slow drip into a measuring cup. Provide the sentence frame "6 faucets waste ___ gallons because ___" and allow numeric answers with a short phrase rather than full sentences.