Student Experiments on the Topic of Micro-plastics in the Environment for Secondary Education Level II: The Coffee Pad Machine Experiment and Sediment Analysis

Sarah Vortmann¹, Dominique Remy², Jörg Klasmeier³ and Marco Beeken^1,

¹University of Osnabrück, Department of Chemistry Education, Osnabrück, Germany

²University of Osnabrück, Department of Biology Osnabrück, Germany

³University of Osnabrück, Department of Environmental Systems Research Osnabrück, Germany

Cite this paper

Sarah Vortmann, Dominique Remy, Jörg Klasmeier and Marco Beeken. Student Experiments on the Topic of Micro-plastics in the Environment for Secondary Education Level II: The Coffee Pad Machine Experiment and Sediment Analysis. World Journal of Chemical Education. 2019; 7(2):96-101. doi: 10.12691/WJCE-7-2-9

Abstract

Two simple laboratory experiments for addressing the issue of microplastics in the aqueous environment in science teaching are developed. Extraction of microbeads from cosmetic products using a coffee pad machine makes students aware of the potential emission of microplastics into the environment by using these products. Density separation of microplastic particles from beach sediment samples on the other hand demonstrates the difficulty of dealing with the problem once the particles have entered the environment. Using the low-cost experimental set-up facilitates integration of the microplastics’ topic into laboratory teaching making science lessons vivid and more interesting.

Keywords

microplastic, model experiment, environmental chemistry, chemistry in context, low-cost method, coffee pad machine, science communication, sediment analysis, density separation procedure, cosmetics

Copyright

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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