S-STEM/TRAIN Scholar Jasmine Patricio

Blog Post Week 5 Protocol for melting Low- Density Polyethylene Get 11g of SPI 4 (Low- Density Polyethylene ) and put it into a pan, making sure that all the little beads are next to each other and do not spread everywhere. Autoclave the plastic. Press the pedal with your foot that is located on the bottom right corner of the machine, to open the sliding door and carefully place the pan into the machine making sure that the beads do not spread around but maintain all together into a single place. Press the pedal again on the bottom right corner to slide close the machine. Press the button that says “melt”. That is going to heat up for 40 minutes at 121° C , which involve: Cooling & Sterilization. Once the machine finishes up, there will be a beeping alarm that goes on. Put plastic gloves on first and then a pair of cooking mittens on grab the pan carefully with the mittens and put on counter shelf. The plastic should be melted completely and should be easy to remove from...

Presentation Title: Testing for Protocols Extraction of Microplastics from Sediment Research Question or Hypothesis *     The NOAA has developed a protocol, , for isolation of microplastics from environmental sediment samples,( Method for the Analysis of Microplastics in Water Samples (2016) .Micro Plastics are plastics particles smaller than 5.0 mm in size. There are two main ways microplastics are formed and enter the body of water: primary and secondary microplastics. Primary microplastics consist of manufactured raw plastic material; virgin plastic pellets, scrubbers, and microbeads that enter the ocean via runoff from land. Secondary microplastic occur when larger plastics items enter a beach or ocean and undergo mechanical, photo and/ or biological degradation. The degradation breaks larger pieces into progressively smaller plastic fragments which eventually become undetectable to the naked eye.  The purpose of this research is to determine how effecti...

The Shredding of Polyethylene The picture above from me is Low density Polyethylene, also known as SPI 4. Which items like Plastic cling wrap, sandwich bags, squeezable bottles, and plastic grocery bags are made of. This product was given to me by Matt who found it in the chemical room. I decided to use it instead of using the Plastics bags since this will be easier to shred. The Polyethylene approximately needs to be at least ⅓ of it size to fit the size of a micro plastic.It also needs to be shredded because over time plastic dissolves and turns into smaller and smaller fragments. So what I was thinking for this shredding process is to superglue a lot of the beads into like a bar soap looking shape, and then just shredding them with the object that looks like a nail filer, therefore I should be left with dust particles in the end.