Fête de la science 2020: Planète Nature – Quelles relations entre l’être humain et son environnement ?

Village des sciences StSo 2020, Lycée Cousteau, Wasquehal – October 7, 2020

Stand Océan plastique
Stefano Berti and Enrico Calzavarini

With the help of Katia Ali Ammar, PhD student at our lab (Unité de Mécanique de Lille), this year we talked about the transport of solid particles in a fluid flow, to discuss with high-school students about plastics dispersion and pollution in the ocean.

More details in our poster [pdf] and in our [slides]

Enrico and Katia install our stand at Lycée Cousteau.
Katia illustrates the effect of viscosity on sedimenting particles.
Using a magnetic mixer to generate a vortex in a tank, Katia and Enrico show the phenomenon of preferential concentration with little plastic debris of different densities. Particles heavier than the fluid are expelled from the vortex, while those lighter than the fluid get trapped inside.