Forever Chemicals & Temporary Stand-Ins:Effects of a Chemical Surfactant on Chlorophyll Production in Lettuce Plants
Plant Science- Grade:
- 11
- Teacher:
- Cynthia Lopez
I selected plant science as the category however, this project has strong environmental themes. Students were inspired by a news article in "Time" online publication titled "EPA Embraces PFAS Pesticides". Students knew they could not use actual forever chemicals PFAS, so they researched what stress PFAS causes on plants and researched a comparable substitute chemical. They selected sodium lauryl sulfate and added various amounts to water and began testing three different groups, low, medium, and high contamination test groups. Students used a vernier Spectrovis plus spectrophotometer and labquest 3 to analyze the relative fluorescence of extracted chlorophyll.