Teaching simple water quality models

Based on the experience of the authors and the literature, a learning procedure is presented that provides the required knowledge on water quality mathematical modeling in a educational, critical and practical manner; it consists of three steps: (1) brief presentation of the basic modeling theory that is applied using a simple problem, which can be selected from a series of general water quality problems contained in this work, (2) construction of a simple computer program in EXCEL to solve, simulate and examine this problem interactively, and (3) brief presentation of the basic Computational Fluid Dynamics theory and its application in a real life problem; the present study focuses on the first two steps. The proposed procedure also includes 25 questions and answers on scientific, educational and practical matters aiming at making the presentation interactive and interesting. It is currently being applied in two courses at the National Technical University of Athens and the Technical University of Munich; it can be easily modified to be used as a teaching–learning tool in a specific standard or e-learning course.