Great Oaks from Little Acorns Grow - Water Pollution

One litre of oil pollutes 1 million litres of potable water! Therefore: Never wash away oils, paint or solvents. Already small amounts render millions of litres of water unusable.

What about other harmful substances like acids, alkaline solutions, detergents, petrol, etc.?

The effect of pollutants on the germination of seeds:

Material: Yoghurt cup, cotton wool, clean tap water, cress seeds, pollutants (as mentioned above)

Line the cups with cotton wool and fill all of them with the same amount of clean tap water. Now add different quantities of oil or other pollutants. Leave one cup without any pollutants as a control. Don’t forget to label the cups! Add 50 cress seeds to each cup. The cups should be set up at room temperature and protected from light. After three days, you can count the sprouted seeds in each cup and compare the samples.

In the single cups, different numbers of seeds germinate. You can also notice differences in the development of the length of the radicles.