Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

If my daughter uses a coffee filter to pour water through could the coffee filter be observed with a microscope to see microplastics?

She wants to get samples from four lakes in our area and from the ocean.

Hello,

Yes, any microplastics that you can't see with the naked eye should be visible with a compound microscope. I would recommend doing some research first on what microplastics look like under a microscope since it might be hard at first to distinguish them from organic matter like algae!