Pollution Solution

On Wednesday, 27 students from Form 71A visited UCLan to take part in the University’s ‘School Unity Network’ initiative. The programme is designed to empower young people, giving them the opportunity to gain knowledge and discover just some of the opportunities that Higher Education can offer them in the future.

The workshop was held in the ‘Young Scientist Centre’ on the University campus. The Science based task was titled ‘Pollution Solution’ which had pupils investigating as to why a large number of fish had suddenly died in a local lake. Pupils looked at influences which could have attributed to the pollution within the lake. They evaluated water samples from various points on the waterway to establish the cause of the problem; testing acidity levels, chloride content, nitrate levels and analysing the water under a microscope to see the microbe content, with particular emphasis on algae.

The pupils enjoyed using the University’s specialist equipment that included automatic pipettes to measure quantities precisely, a vortex to mix their solutions and microscopes to analyse the composition of the water. They analysed all the data at the end of the workshop and were able to establish the culprit of the pollution based on their evidence.

We would like to thank UClan and their fantastic staff for providing a highly interactive workshop that allowed our students to get hands-on practical Science experience and answer questions through experimentation.