Blog Post Week 7 : Bacteria In Tempe Town Lake?

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One gallon of Tempe Town Lake water was collected and kept in the fridge until all plastic was ready and in its correct form of 5mm or smaller to fit the characteristic of microplastic size.  There are a total of six tea pods and in each tea pod there are a total of 0.5 grams of microplastics they are currently being kept in an light incubator at 32 °C. The tea pods and water sample will be kept in the light incubator for one month, and we will be observing bacteria growth on the microplastic and see if perhaps the bacteria degraded the micro plastic and which kind of plastic was most affected by it by observing weight loss. The first picture on the top left is the water and plastic before placing it in the light incubator and the picture next to it is Day 2; there was brown somewhat like algae that started to grow on top of the the tea pods. Day 3; is the bottom left and the brown part started growing more and around the tea pods. The picture next to that is Day 4; as you could see within 4 days the water quickly has turned colors to more a deeper brown color.


Comments

  1. Maricruz ChavezMarch 8, 2018 at 8:05 PM

    Wow! It's amazing how much bacteria has accumulated within your water sample in a mere span of four days! I believe this is my first time commenting on your blog and I have to say the project you're working on is incredibly fascinating. As we both know, photodegradation is a contributing factor to the creation of microplastics, it would be incredibly interesting if bacteria had a similar effect.I can't wait to hear more about this Jas!

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