Blog Post Week 11

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This week in lab I was able to finish the extraction of the micro plastics with the Potassium Carbonate, they were then rinsed with DI water through the vacuum sucker while I tried to remove the small leftover sediment. Then they were put in the heating oven so that they were dry. For the final step I put Hydrogen Peroxide in all of the sediments so that it could dissolve any nature particles left, that could affect the final measurements. This will be my final solution run that I will do. What is left to do is just analyze the data. Some of the outcomes from this solution that was different from the others was that this one smelled like the incubator that holds bacteria in the lab room, Matt said it smelled like a swamp or something but it was a really disturbing odor. Also this solution was a bit more hazardous than the others ones because it could have caused skin irritation. With this solution though it was very easy to separate the sediment from the plastic because all 1-6 plastics seemed to float and not sink like the others.

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