Sugar Spill! Bioremediation Cleanup Experiment
In this activity, students act as environmental engineers involved with the clean up of a toxic spill. Using bioremediation as the process, students select which bacteria they will use to eat up the pollutant spilled. Students learn how engineers use bioremediation to make organism degrade harmful chemicals. Engineers must make sure bacteria have everything they need to live and degrade contaminants for bioremediation to happen. Students learn about the needs of living things by setting up an experiment with yeast. The scientific method is reinforced as students must design the experiment themselves making sure they include a control and complete parts of a formal lab report.
Students work to clean up a toxic spillCopyright FEMA Photo Library. Wikimedia Commons http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/FEMA_-_31024_-_Oil_spill_clean_up_in_Kansas.jpg
Environmental engineers involved with bioremediation need to have a solid background in science to understand the characteristics of different microorganisms to know how to use them. Engineers also need to know how pollutants may impact the ecosystem around them.
After this activity, students should be able to:
- Understand the process of bioremediation.
- Explain how engineers make sure bacteria have everything they need to help degrade harmful compounds.
- Gain experience with mass and volume measurements.