Over the past few weeks, I worked on a project to further explore why my inquiry is important to me personally. This project included three parts; the first part was the research phase, the second part was on symbolism, and the third part was the writing phase. During part one, I read two academic articles of research conducted by groups working on finding solutions to the problems with ocean plastics. This research was informative, and it also made me think about solutions to the issue of ocean plastics in a new way. One of the articles highlighted that it is more important to focus on stopping thee inflow of plastic to the ocean before working to remove existing plastic in the oceans. This was an interesting and enjoyable portion of the project and you can visit my research by clicking the link to the document here. For the symbolism phase, which was the second portion of the project, I created a poster about what my inquiry means to me. You can see what I created below, and you can read a description on the explanation of the poster in the next phase of the project. The final phase included writing a research paper which incorporated the research that we did and the graphic element that we created. You can read a copy of my research paper by clicking the link here.
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In the past few weeks, I have continued to work on my ocean plastic simulation. I have focused on fixing problems in the simulation such as figuring at how to make new plastic enter the simulation consistently. I also worked on keeping the populations surviving for a longer time and from not getting overpopulated. In order to do this, I ran the simulation without adding in plastic. This allowed me to focus on the problems that were occurring within the populations, regardless of the plastic that was being added. This helped me to understand why some species were dying off and why other species were becoming overpopulated. I then worked to fix some of these issues. I added commands that would limit the amount of organisms that each species could have. This helped the simulation to not get flooded with too many organisms of one species, which often caused the program to crash. I was also able to increase the rate of survival of the sea turtles, because they had been quickly dying out most of the time. After fixing most of the issues with the populations, I was able to add the plastic back in. Overall, the program began working a lot smoother.
One of the other main things that I have been working on was figuring out how to take data from the simulation. Even though the simulation is not done yet, I wanted to explore how to download the data onto my computer and what the capabilities I had with using the data. By taking time to figure out how I can access the data and how I can create graphs from it, I will be able to more easily take data when I am at that stage in my project. One thing that I still need to work out how to do is keeping all of my data organized. I can imagine that it will be easy to mix data files up or accidentally add the same data in multiple times, therefore skewing the results. In order to have accurate data, I will need to figure out a. system to organize my data. Over the past week, I began focusing on creating my simulation of ocean plastics. I began by setting up the basics of my simulation -- getting each species created, creating the plastic, and setting up the basic features of the simulation such as movement of the organisms. After I had the basics of my simulation working, I wrote out an outline of the simulation. The outline worked out the interactions between different species, the steps that will happen in my simulation, and the ways that organisms can die and how they can survive. By outlining everything that will happen in my simulation, I now have a clearer picture of what I will need to program in order to get my simulation to work the way that I need it to. Furthermore, I will use this outline to keep my on track with my simulation by making sure that my simulation aligns with the outline. After I finished working on the outline, I began to work on the actual simulation, focusing on different aspects of my simulation that I developed in my outline. I ran into some challenges along the way when I did not know how to add more plastic to the simulation after a set period of time. After trying many different ways to get this to work, I finally was able to get more plastic to add to the simulation every 50 turns. Essentially what happens is that every time that the plastic turns to Microplastic, new plastic is added to the simulation. Overtime, the plastic all builds up, causing the animals to die out and the screen to become increasingly filled with plastic. Overall, this process has allowed me to make big strides in my program so far. Below, you can see some pictures from my simulation.
Over the past week, I finished my research phase of my ocean plastics inquiry. After finishing up my research, I now feel that I have a solid background on ocean ecosystems and I will now be able to create my simulation based off of my research. I focused this week's research on the impacts of plastic and I found several resources that I read off of and watched videos of, in order to better understand the impacts that plastic has on the ocean. The research phase has helped me to understand the direct impacts that plastic has on the ocean. When plastic gets in the ocean ecosystem, many problems can occur, including: plastic getting into the food web, animals colonizing on plastic causing the floating plastic to take the organisms to areas they do not naturally inhabit, and chocking, strangling, or cutting animals. I also focused on learning about possible solutions to the problem. These possible solutions include: preventative measures such as legislation banning single-use plastic, reducing the problem by cleaning up beaches, recycling and reusing plastic for new purposes, and changing our habits to not include as many single-use plastic products in our daily lives. At the end of my inquiry, I will revisit these solutions and learn more about what solutions will work best to fix our problems with ocean plastics.
All of my current research can be found by clicking here to view my research document. You can also watch the video at the top of this page that briefly explains the overview of the problems that humans face due to ocean plastics. Over the past few weeks, I have been working on the research phase of my ocean plastics inquiry. The past few weeks have been dedicated to researching the rest of the background information on ocean ecosystems. I also worked extensively on research of plastic. For this research I read articles and watched videos about the origins of plastic, what plastic is used for, how plastic gets into our ecosystems, and what the direct impact of ocean plastics is. Over these past few weeks I have been focused on diving deeper into my research, enabling me to get a better understanding of the topic. I am almost completely done with my research, which will hopefully be wrapped up this week, after which I will begin creating my simulation. You can click here for a detailed account of my current research, or you can continue reading this post to understand an overview of what I have learned and researched in the past few weeks. There are many different types of plastic, each one having slightly different properties and slightly different uses, but the one thing that all plastics have in common is that they are not biodegradable. This means that once plastic is created, it will remain in the environment forever, or at the very least for thousands and thousands of years. Since plastic never breaks down, that means that it can easily become a pollutant if it is released into natural habitats. Most plastics are made to be single-use plastic, meaning that is used for one purpose, one time, and then disposed of. This is very wasteful. One of the main problems with plastic materials is that disposal systems for plastic are not very good, causing plastic waste to escape into ecosystems, oftentimes the ocean. One of the positive qualities of plastic for consumers is that it is very light weight, but it can easily hold many items; because plastic is so light, environmental factors such as wind or storms can cause plastic to be picked up and brought to the ocean where it is deposited. Another way that plastic can get into the environment is if run-off from rain pushes litter into storm drains. These storm drains empty out in rivers or streams, all of which eventually end up in the ocean. This means that plastic for cities or suburban communities can often end up in oceans, even if the city is hundreds of miles away from the water. So, the first problem is that plastic can easily get into ocean ecosystems, but the second problem is what happens once the plastic gets there. There are a multitude of things that could happen: it could break down into tiny pieces of microplastic, mistakingly eat by animals, or harm animals by chocking or strangling them. Plastic is not known to be degradable in any way, but ocean water currents and sunlight cause big pieces of plastic to break down into tiny microscopic beads of plastic, making the waste virtually impossible to clean out of the ocean. Microplastics cause major destruction in the ocean, as microorganisms often form colonies on them, attaching themselves to this harmful material which can then be eaten by larger predators. Other pieces of plastic are mistaken as food by animals who might think they are fish or even jellyfish. Some pieces of plastic end up getting caught in animals throats, cutting up their organs, or strangling animals. Not only does plastic directly kill animals, but if animals do survive eating plastic, the plastic that they eat over their whole lifetime often ends up cumulating in their stomach. This can kill animals in the ocean. Or, the ingested plastic can travel. up the food chain as predators eat prey, causing the organisms at the top of the ocean to have huge amounts of plastic in their bodies. As more and more plastic builds up in animals bodies, and as the plastic moves up the food chain, the plastic becomes more potent and more toxic. Plastic itself is very toxic, often being associated with cancer. Many types of plastics are known to be carcinogenic. Eventually, as the ingested plastic moves far enough up the food chain, and reaches the human level. Yes, you read that right. Microplastics end up in human seafood such as fish or shellfish. Studies have shown that shellfish such as clams or oysters on average have 8 pieces of plastic in them. The plastic is transferred to humans when these animals are eaten. Chances are, you have plastic in you too. Now, this is a major problem, because plastic is not food, we all know that. No one would go around eating a plastic water bottle, or a plastic shopping bag, but essentially that is what we are doing when we eat seafood. Our waste, ends up in our ecosystems which in turn means our waste ends up in us. This is the scary reality that we live in, and I hope to bring more awareness to this important topic through my inquiry and research of the topic.
This week I began my first inquiry: Ocean Plastics. I focused on research this week, in order to get the background information necessary to create my simulation. There is so much research that I need in order to make my simulation as accurate as possible, I only got to surface level research this week. I will continue to dive deeper into the background information for my inquiry in the coming weeks. So far, I have began researching on how the oceans were created, the diversity of marine life,and ocean currents. All of this information will be used in my simulation in order for me to be able to create an accurate representation of ocean ecosystems.
You can view a detailed account of my current research by clicking here, but you can continue reading for an overview of my research so far. Our oceans were created as the Earth cooled when the Earth was first formed. The water in the Earth’s atmosphere turned from a gas to a liquid as the temperature of the Earth cooled, causing the torrential rains to pour down on the Earth’s surface. The water filled the Earth’s basins, creating the oceans. Slowly overtime life formed in the oceans, developing from simple, eukaryotic organisms, having only one cell, to more complex, prokaryotic organisms, often begin multicellular. The oceans became very diverse; the variety of organisms found in the oceans increased exponentially. All of life’s most important elements, including: carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, silicon, and calcium, can be found in ocean water, which aided the development of marine biota. One of the most vital organisms in the oceans, is plankton. Plankton come in many different forms, but they are all an important food source for many ocean animals; plankton feed the food chains of the ocean. Ocean currents also affect how the oceans work. These currents form circular patterns and there are two main types of ocean currents: those at the surface, called tropical gyres, and those in the depths of the oceans, called thermohaline circulation. Tropical gyres are mostly dependent on wind patterns and the rotation of the Earth on its axis. These gyres mostly affect whatever is floating at the surface of the ocean. Thermohaline circulation affects everything within the ocean. These currents are formed due to the differences in water temperature in different regions of the Earth. Due to the natural tendency for all nature to be uniform, the heat in the oceans tend to try to disperse as evenly as possible. This causes the areas of warm water to move towards areas of colder water, thus causing deep-ocean circulations. All of the information that I gathered this week, will enable me to understand how the oceans work. By using this background research, I will be able to create a more accurate simulation of how our ocean ecosystems are affected by plastic. |
Overview of my InquiryIn this inquiry I hope to learn about how our ocean ecosystems work, the effect of ocean plastics on our oceans, and what we can do to lessen the effects of ocean plastics, through research. Once I have my background knowledge, I hope to be able to take what I learned and model it in a programmed biological simulation using starlogo nova, which is a programming language. My simulation will be able to vary the amount of plastic that reaches the oceans, the toxicity of the plastics to the ocean life, and the amount of ocean creatures in order to take data from the simulation on how ocean plastics affect ecosystems and what makes a healthy ocean ecosystem. Once I finish working on the simulation I will write up a summary explaining what I learned and connecting it back to what we can do to help our ocean ecosystems. Through this, I will be learning about scientific writing.
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