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Exploring the Tiny World of Microplastics in Your Own “Lab”
Summary
This educational article introduces microplastics to young readers by explaining their origins from the breakdown of everyday plastic objects, their varied shapes and sizes, and their discovery across remote environments from Arctic lakes to ocean sediments. The article demonstrates low-cost methods that students can use to analyze microplastics and encourages participation in citizen science.
Microplastics are tiny pieces of plastic that result from the breakdown of larger plastic objects, such as water bottles, shopping bags, food containers, and many other types of waste. Microplastics can be as small as a bacterial cell or as big as a grain of rice. Microplastics exist in many dierent shapes: some are round and smooth while others are in the shape of fibers or fragments. Scientists have known about microplastics in nature since the 1970s, but lately they are finding these tiny plastics almost everywhere they look -in the air, lakes, rivers, oceans, on land, and even in remote places like Arctic lakes and snow! In this article, we will show you the hidden universe of microplastics, cool tools scientist use to analyze them, and show how you can do your own experiment to analyze microplastics from a nearby beach
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