Micro-mystery

Did you know about 8 million tonnes of plastic end up in our ocean every year? But of that 8 million tonnes, most of it is hard to find. We'll head to Ocean Wise's high-tech lab to investigate where microplastics come from. Next, we'll visit a marina to find out how the University of Toronto's Trash Team is collecting and tracing microplastics in Lake Ontario.

6 min video

1 h 15 min activity

Grade 9+

Subjects

Key Concepts

Transcript

1 h 15 min activity

Lab challenge: Did you know there is plastic in our salt? In this activity, students will develop a hypothesis and follow a procedure to investigate how much microplastic is present in three different types of salt. They analyze their data and report their findings. Finally, they discuss the effects that ingesting microplastic may have on living things.

Headed to the lab? There is a printable 8.5 x 11 version of the activity in the teacher resources below.