12 Year Old Girl Develops Pollution-Detecting Robot To Help Save the Ocean

A 12-year old girl from Massachusetts has developed a water-cleaning system that has attracted attention from major tech companies.

Anna Du from Andover loves the water and regularly goes to the Boston Harbor. It was there that inspiration struck.

One day when I was at Boston Harbor, I noticed there was a lot of plastics on the sand, I tried picking some up, but there seemed to be so many more, and it just seemed impossible to clean it all up

While she is hardly the first person to be overwhelmed by trash in a public area like the Harbor, Du was able to take her concern and translate it into action. She built a robot with an infrared light that detects microplastics in the ocean.

Microplastics are an increasing problem not just in Boston, but around the globe. Defined as particles of plastic under five millimeters, or 0.196 inches, they've become commonplace. A study released in April showed that ice samples from the Arctic Ocean contained 12,000 microplastic particles per liter of sea ice, the highest measurement ever taken.

Those scientists used similar technique to Du's remotely operated vehicle (ROV). Infrared is the preferred tactic for detecting microplastics because, as Du explains in her video, the chemical bonds within plastics are good at absorbing infrared.

With her ROV, Du applied for and was accepted into 3M's Young Scientist Lab. There, she'll be mentored by scientists in ways to improve her ROV. Her next hope is to move on from ROVs to autonomous microplastic-detecting drones.