What is in your slime?

Dec 15, 2018 • 11:07 AM UTC

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Fungi

Amy Downs

5th & 6th-grade teacher in Visalia, California

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Slime particles under Foldscope

5th Grade Student Work A week ago I started a Foldscope Club for 5th-7th Graders. I told them to be curious explorers and come see me at recess if they had questions or needed help making slides. After the weekend a very disappointed girl came to my classroom and said she couldn’t find anything to put in her Foldscope. “You can Foldscope just about anything!” I told her. After thinking a bit she asked, “Do you think I could Foldscope Slime?”
When she brought out her slime from her backpack I knew she would get some great samples. We had been reading about micros-plastics and how harmful these are to the environment. https://t.co/1SfYcYyq5y
Using the filter she separated the particles from the gooey slime. Like a great scientist, she brings back her slides the next day and we get even more questions about what we see under the Foldscope. Could that gritty stuff we feel in the slime be plastic or could it be sand? Would the stars be harmful to animals?
Next week we will investigate sand so we can compare samples and we will take a closer look at the stars. Her explorations with Foldscoping have just begun!