Mouse Door Opener Day 2023 at the CRC Microplastics
"Doors open with the mouse" was the motto again on German Unity Day at the Collaborative Research Centre for Microplastics. Many children followed the call of the "Sendung mit der Maus" to get an idea of one of the exciting areas at the University of Bayreuth.
This year's motto of the Mouse Door Opener Day was "hidden treasures". But what hidden treasures does a research area on microplastics have to offer? "Plastics are made from the raw material petroleum and that is a finite resource and a precious commodity. So the plastics derived from it are far too valuable for us to simply dispose of them as waste. Making these 'treasures' more recyclable or ensuring that their decomposition products do not remain in the environment in the long term are just a small part of our diverse interdisciplinary research work and tasks," explains Prof. Andreas Greiner, co-speaker of the CRC Microplastics.
The inquisitive children between the ages of five and eleven were able to experiment themselves and find out what influence the density of plastics has on their sinking behaviour in fresh and salt waters. The children were particularly excited about water fleas, which are an important model organism for the Collaborative Research Centre to test the biological effects of microplastics. Water fleas reproduce by so-called juvenile production, i.e. a female water flea can produce genetically identical daughter water fleas. Thus, the influence of anthropogenic pollutants such as microplastics can be studied well - since the same "genetic framework conditions" are always present in the model organism. The children contributed their knowledge and together with the researchers discussed the importance of plastics in our everyday lives and how to deal responsibly with these (not so) hidden treasures.
The Mouse Door Opener Day 2023 was supported by PhD students Marco La Capra and Simon Wieland, who were able to show their flair for presenting complicated research results in a simple way. Student Lisa King supported the two doctoral students in explaining things to the children.
"Public relations work, such as the Mouse Door Opener Day, not only brings curious outsiders, such as children, pupils, parents and teachers, into contact with the CRC - internally, contributors and students also get to know the CRC's research from new perspectives and thus rise to the challenge of communicating their knowledge in a way that is appropriate for the target group," says Melanie Pöhlmann, project coordinator of the CRC microplastics.
