50p
Misadventures in Plastic
As part of science lessons with Mrs Lawrence, this year students are learning about different environmental topics and conducting experiments every Friday during what she calls “Green Fridays”. In Physics 11, we are working on an environmental study project in which we are dealing with the question of how plastic moves in our oceans. The lessons involved in the project take place every time we have physics on a Friday.
During first term, Physics 11 students learned a lot about plastic pollution including how plastics end up in the ocean, the impact they have on aquatic life, and the different initiatives around the world that are dealing with the removal of plastics from the oceans. Working in groups, we then learned about experimental design and we started planning experiments to analyze how plastics would move if they were released from our school into the ocean.
After good planning in the autumn of 2019, we are currently preparing to carry out the experiment. We will collect information about how fast plastic waste in our oceans moves, which is very interesting because this will help us understand better the plastics problem. The main idea of most groups is that one or more objects made of plastic, such as bottles and bags, are equipped with a mini GPS sensor and then thrown into the water at different places on the coast of Mill Bay. The experiment must guarantee that the plastics are retrievable because we do not want to add to the problem. After that, we track the object and get information about its motion. For that, students will use the kinematics skills they learned in the first term.
The current political disagreements about sustainability and climate change make this experiment a very fascinating contemporary topic. “I find the participation in such a project very exciting. Especially through current discussions and the Fridays for Future movement, it is very interesting to learn about the plastic pollution in our oceans and to do an experiment myself’’ observed Bright A, Privett ‘21 about the project.
Mrs Lawrence reflected on her idea to start this initiative: “I had the Green Fridays idea because of the current increase in youth participation in the discussions about sustainability and climate change. I thought that it would be a very interesting thing for our students to be given the opportunity to use Friday classes to explore topics related to our impact on our planet while applying the concepts learned in class.’’
Thank you very much to Mrs Lawrence, who has designed this project very well from the beginning.
Ben H, Privett '21
During first term, Physics 11 students learned a lot about plastic pollution including how plastics end up in the ocean, the impact they have on aquatic life, and the different initiatives around the world that are dealing with the removal of plastics from the oceans. Working in groups, we then learned about experimental design and we started planning experiments to analyze how plastics would move if they were released from our school into the ocean.
After good planning in the autumn of 2019, we are currently preparing to carry out the experiment. We will collect information about how fast plastic waste in our oceans moves, which is very interesting because this will help us understand better the plastics problem. The main idea of most groups is that one or more objects made of plastic, such as bottles and bags, are equipped with a mini GPS sensor and then thrown into the water at different places on the coast of Mill Bay. The experiment must guarantee that the plastics are retrievable because we do not want to add to the problem. After that, we track the object and get information about its motion. For that, students will use the kinematics skills they learned in the first term.
The current political disagreements about sustainability and climate change make this experiment a very fascinating contemporary topic. “I find the participation in such a project very exciting. Especially through current discussions and the Fridays for Future movement, it is very interesting to learn about the plastic pollution in our oceans and to do an experiment myself’’ observed Bright A, Privett ‘21 about the project.
Mrs Lawrence reflected on her idea to start this initiative: “I had the Green Fridays idea because of the current increase in youth participation in the discussions about sustainability and climate change. I thought that it would be a very interesting thing for our students to be given the opportunity to use Friday classes to explore topics related to our impact on our planet while applying the concepts learned in class.’’
Thank you very much to Mrs Lawrence, who has designed this project very well from the beginning.
Ben H, Privett '21