S.I.S. = Something Interesting Soon (I promise) 🤞☮

            This week I started doing research about my project. I specifically find the topic of microplastics to be intriguing because it is a bit of uncharted territory. Recently, buzz is starting to highlight the thoughts of the scientific community surrounding microplastics.  The general public is responding and reacting to the information retrieved through multiple sources. As always, some of these sources that are distributing information are emotional backed responses. The varying degrees of finger pointing about someone taking away another person’s straws are headlines on our social media and also distributed through mass media channels. The alternative opinion also brushes through our daily information dissemination process with bits and pieces of scientific information helping to form the opinion of the “straw thieves” valiant attempt to help the inheritors’ of Earth make this place more sustainable. Thus science is stepping up to the plate to develop protocols to find microplastics. I will be finishing a microplastic extraction protocol and determining its efficiency. This week I am reading through other protocols that have been established and determining where I am going to start.  In the past a similar project was started, there were complications acquiring the microplastics. It took a considerable amount of time to shred the plastic material, a method was followed, but there was contamination in the retrieved plastics.  Since an effective method was further discovered I will follow that to acquire the microplastics I need.  With the help of Matt H. he showed me the stash of microplastics I could use to make my samples.

                                                          Plastic #3 - Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) (From stash)