Team:SBS NY/Human Practices

Metal<span>-</span>hunters— Brief description

Human Practice

Our human practice has greatly influenced our purpose, design of experiment, and execution throughout the project. After we have initially decided the main goal of our experiment, we have done a lot of online research by sending out surveys to the public and offline research like an investigation. From the results of our survey, we could tell that most people clearly know the severe situation of heavy metal pollution and would like to support our team. From our survey question about investigating the most hazardous metal in people’s minds, we confirmed the four kinds of heavy metals that we were going to focus on and try to eliminate- copper, zinc, mercury and cadmium. As we started our experiment in the laboratory, our human practice group interviewed Professor Fu, who brought us some insights about how to make our method and product more competitive. Listening to Professor Fu’s suggestions, we decided that our project would be mainly focusing on how to detect the concentration of different heavy metals in the soil rather than eliminating it. That is because we have learned from him that all the current solutions of detecting heavy metals are time-consuming and require sophisticated machines. However, our method of using transformed bacteria to detect heavy metal concentration might be a huge breakthrough in this area since it would save a lot of time. Also, we decided that our product would be designed specifically for emergency situations which required result as quickly as possible, Therefore, we redesigned our experiment to fit the new goal of our project. After we got our result of the experiment, we have held lectures to publicize our new method of detecting heavy metal concentration in the soil. The responses and support we got from young teenagers warmly encouraged and confirmed our resolution to keep utilizing our limited power and knowledge to make this world better.

Public Interest Survey

In order to fully understand the situation of heavy metal pollution and ways to detect and solve the problem, we did a lot of online research from which we learned that heavy metals which most seriously polluted soil in China were cadmium, mercury, copper, and zinc. Based on the research we had done on the Internet, we designed the preliminary experiment. Also, we sent out surveys to learn about the public opinion of heavy metal pollution and their opinions on our projects. From the results we got from our surveys, most of the participants would like to support our project financially and more than half of them thought our method of dealing with heavy metal pollution in soil was more convenient and efficient.

Interviewing Environmental Science Experts

On July 7th, We visited Professor Fu who majored in and received a PhD degree in Environmental Engineering. When we introduced our project to Professor Fu, he showed great interest in our creative method of using bacteria to detect the concentration of heavy metals in soil. Professor Fu made a presentation about current solutions that are commonly used for heavy metal investigation in soil.

Inspiritions from Professor Fu

After we explained our method and experiment to Professor Fu, he proposed that we could design our product to be a "first-aid kit" for testing the heavy metal concentration of soil in emergency situations like pollution caused by Chemical Plant Leakage. For example, our product could be used for the explosion of the container storage station at the Port of Tianjin in 2015. He said that the major problem of current solutions was that it took researchers several days to see the result, such delay might cause further injuries of people and improper treatment of the polluted soil. Also, the testing had to be done in a well-equipped laboratory which required long-distance transportation. For emergency situations, the traditional method of testing heavy metal concentration in the soil might be too complicated and time-consuming. Therefore, in order to make our method more competent, we should develop a relatively simple but efficient mechanism by which we can get the result of the heavy metal concentration in soil in hours. Also, since our method didn’t require sophisticated machines for testing the sample, it offered a cheaper price and more availability for non-proficient factory owners to run the test even when skilled scientists were not nearby.

After interviewing Professor Fu, our team held an emergency meeting as we realized that we need to revise our experiment to better fit the social situation of the heavy metal solution. Considering that the current solutions were mature and widespread, we decided that our improvement should be focusing on how to detect the heavy metal pollution in the soil more quickly and conveniently. Just as Professor Fu said, the advantage of our method was its creativity and effectiveness for emergency situations. Therefore, our following experiment and lab should focus on how to shorten the time and device required to get the result. As a result, we adjusted our main goal of the method which affected our modeling and further design of our devices and equipment.

Field Trip & Sample Collectings

Our team had been to several different areas to collect samples for the detection of heavy metal pollution. This photo shows one of our team members collecting sample from a lake in Beijing.

Response from an Ordinary Farmer

When we were walking in the fields looking for any recipients of our survey, we met a welcoming old lady. She has lived on the farm for her whole life, and she has seen the changes heavy metal pollution has brought to this beautiful land. We asked her opinion about heavy metal pollution in soil, and she said as follows. This used to be a harmonious land, but after large factories started their business around, people started getting more and more unknown diseases continuously. There must have been something wrong with the heavy metal pollution, all the people knew. Therefore, she wished to have an easy and convenient way to detect the heavy metal concentration in her farmlands so that she wouldn’t produce unhealthy and harmful vegetables for people to eat, and also prevent her family from stepping into heavily polluted areas. We introduced our method of testing heavy metal pollution to her and she happily supported us to keep doing our research and develop a device for common farmers like her to use.

Mini Courses On Project-Related Scientific Studies

After the effectiveness of our method had been confirmed by the results of our experiment, we held a lecture to young teenagers who were interested in our project and would like to learn more about heavy metal pollution and ways to detect it. These pictures show our team members who were giving a lecture and answering their questions about our unique method of using bacteria to detect heavy metal concentration in soil.

Scientific Lecture To Young Scholars

When we were holding the lecture, students were well engaged and asked a lot of good questions. They showed great interest in our project and would like to learn more about the details of our experiment and the social application of our product. This event helped us realize the value of our project as we were promoting young teenagers to pay more attention to environmental problems and to utilize their own talents and wisdom to solve real-world problems. We were glad that we inspired those young scientists to love the environment and love science, and through them, we got great ideas of how to put that equipment into efficient usage. We just carry those "first-aid kit" around and go to wherever needs us, as they said. Thanks a lot to these young scholars :)

Support on Wechat Official Account

We established a Wechat official account to regularly introduce our team progress and educate the readers with some Mini-Courses, in which we simply describe some science-based knowledge that is related to our own project design. We got a total of over 20,000 reads and lots of support!