Best experienced with sound on. Touch the pads to mix.
Nothing here is simplified or faked. The pitches you hear are a direct translation of the molecular fingerprints scientists read in the lab, the same measurements used to find contamination you cannot see.
Microplastics and nanoplastics pervade the Great Lakes but stay invisible to the eye, some as small as 300 nanometers. They accumulate in small organisms like daphnia and biomagnify through fish. Scientists use Raman spectroscopy to identify them by their molecular vibration patterns.
Each plastic type carries a distinct fingerprint under laser light. PET vibrates differently than PP, which differs from PE and PS. Those spectral peaks, measured in wavenumbers, reveal a contamination identity that would otherwise stay hidden.
The spectral peaks scientists analyze are converted to audible frequencies. You are not hearing an analogy. You are hearing the actual data collected from Great Lakes water, the same molecular signatures the research team works with.
Touch a physical plastic sample, PET, PE, PP, or PS, to trigger the interface.
The screen shows the authentic Raman spectrum for that plastic, with its peaks labeled.
Tones play the spectral peaks, the actual molecular vibration frequencies, as sound.
Combine up to four plastics at once and hear how their signatures overlap, just like a real environmental sample.
Markers trace the full process, from sampling on the lake to analysis in the lab.
A physical Makey Makey installation travels to museums and festivals, turning everyday objects into the DJ's controls, so visitors play the spectra with their hands.
Developed under the NOAA MOSAIC partnership, with Haoran Wei as Principal Investigator and Travis Tangen as Co-Principal Investigator. This material is based upon work supported by NOAA under Award No. NA24OARX417C0392. The microPlastics DJ is a STEMsaic Research Impacts public-engagement project, built through STEMsaic Portal, a member of the Portal to the Public Network.