Oil spills put harmful oil into the water — and cleaning them up is not simple. Polypropylene pads are one tool used to soak up oil during spill response, but adding detergent to the water might change how well they work. You mix engine oil and water in a container, add one of four detergents (Tide, Wisk, Jet Dry, or Dawn), then place a polypropylene pad in the mixture. Weighing the pad before and after shows how much oil it absorbed. A control test with no detergent provides the baseline. The results reveal whether detergent helps or blocks oil absorption.

When harmful substances get into rain, the polluted water falls on soil and damages living things. Acid rain is a form of environmental pollution where the rain itself becomes acidic enough to stop plants from growing. This project shows that sunflower seeds watered at pH 3 and pH 2 never sprout at all, revealing how polluted rain causes real damage.

Malathion is a pesticide that kills flies within 30 minutes — a clear example of how harmful chemicals in the environment damage living things. This project tests whether activated carbon can neutralize that harmful substance. You spray malathion on overripe bananas and place them in aquarium tanks with flies. Some bananas also get a coating of activated carbon solution at different concentrations. You then count how many flies survive over one hour to see whether higher doses of activated carbon protect them from the pesticide's deadly effects.