Welcome to the third kitchen experiment. Here we look at the pollution of the oceans by oil. First, watch the video on this topic.

Now that you have learnt about the background to marine pollution, you can investigate the effects of oil in water on birds in your own kitchen laboratory at home:

To do this, you will need the following materials:

• 3 small feathers (or 3 pieces of a large feather)
• 3 small bowls
• 1 coffee spoon
• 1 pair of tweezers
• 150ml tap water in a measuring jug
• table salt
• Cooking oil (e.g. rapeseed oil)
• Kitchen towels

Once you have all the materials in front of you, you can get started.

First, add 2 teaspoons of table salt to the 150ml of tap water and fill each bowl with 50ml of this tap water and salt. Add 3 teaspoons of cooking oil to 2 of the bowls. Leave the third bowl filled with salt water only.

Put one of the bowls with cooking oil and salt water, the bowl with only salt water and a kitchen towel to one side. Then place the three feathers in the bowl with salt water and cooking oil, which is still in front of you. Oil the feathers by stirring until they are slightly sticky. Then take the feathers out with the tweezers and place one feather in each of the bowls on the side and the third feather on the kitchen towel to dry. Try to clean the feathers as well as possible by moving the shells and moving them with the tweezers, leave the third feather to dry. What can you observe?

Tip: Download the worksheet as a PDF document!