01. Chemistry Research

Coordinators: Prof. Trevor Del Castillo and Prof. Alexei Khalizov 

Important: All documents and files for your experiment must be submitted by April 18th, 2025! 

Objectives and Background: 

Microplastics are small pieces of plastic, usually smaller than 5 mm. They are persistent, very mobile and hard to remove from nature. A growing volume of microplastics is found in the environment, including in the air, sea, and soil, as well as in food and in drinking water. 

Once in the environment, microplastics do not biodegrade and tend to accumulate - unless they are specifically designed to biodegrade in the open environment. There are increasing concerns about microplastics in different environment compartments and their impact on the environment, biodiversity, and potentially human health. 

In this event, you will explore the presence of microplastics in your everyday environments and learn about microscopy, environmental sampling, and the lifecycle of plastics in our society.  

Chemistry.jpg

​https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/plastics/microplastics_en 

Event-Specific Requirements: 

Part 1: Conduct Literature Research to Address the Following: 

A. A brief history of plastic materials (polymers).  

B. The history of microplastics: 

i. What are some of the types of microplastics? What are they chemically made of and what forms do they take. 

ii. What are some of the ways in which microplastics form or are introduced into the environment? 

iii. How has the presence of microplastics been measured in different environments? 

iv. What are concerns around the presence of microplastics in the environment? 

C. What efforts are being made to understand, remediate, or prevent further problems associated with microplastic accumulation. 

Part 2: Conduct Original Research: 

• Design and conduct experiments to detect or observe microplastics obtained by sampling environments such as your home, your school, or the outdoors. You can focus on microplastics present in air, water, or soil. The use of an optical microscope can aid in detection.  

• Create a short video of your experiment. The video should be under 10 minutes and be of high enough quality to be posted on YouTube for others to view in the future. 

Part 3: Create a written report of what you learned in parts 1 and 2: 

• Introduction, including a brief history of microplastics as well as a description of the various forms and how they differ  

• Describe the experimental setup and procedures you ran. Diagrams may be useful here. Discuss how you obtained and processed samples as well as how you identified microplastics in your samples. 

• Show and analyze your results. Tables may be useful here. Describe how your findings differed between different samples.  

• Draw conclusions on the relative amounts and types of microplastics you observed in different environments. 

• Include a link to your video on YouTube in the report. 

Event Day: 

Teams will make a short (three-minute) presentation via PowerPoint slides or poster. Presentations will be scheduled for the morning of the Chemistry Olympics.   (6 minutes maximum: 3 minute prepared presentation + 3 minutes Q&A). Specific laboratory data collected should be presented to the judges in a graphical or pictorial manner. The provided data should strongly support any experimentation-based conclusions.