In this activity, students investigate exhaust emissions, car use and air quality.

What you need

• Clean white socks
• Vehicle(s)
• Gloves
• White card
• Scissors
• Vaseline
• Tape, drawing pins
• microscope - bring your polution catcher's to school and ask science teacher to help you 

What to do

Exhaust emissions - NOTE: you will need help of adult, car owner 

1. Place a white sock over the exhaust pipe of a car and run the car for 5 minutes. Stand back while the engine is running.

2. Remove the sock – use gloves as the exhaust pipe will be hot! – and turn it inside out.  

3. Wrtite/draw/record what you see. Soot particles are produced during the combustion of petrol and diesel. (An average car produces approximately 2 kilograms of pollution for every 35 kilometres it travels. The UK Alliance of British Drivers website provides a short summary of Facts About Car Exhausts.) How dirty would the sock be after longer periods of time?

4. If possible, conduct the same experiment to compare different types of car, for example diesel versus petrol, old versus new, big versus small.

Air Catcher 

1. Cut out several 50 x 50 mm squares of white card and smear the surface of each lightly with Vaseline.

2. Fix the squares to as many different areas you can think of, for example, by the bus stop, inside the classroom, under trees, by a car park, on a post by traffic lights, on a back door and so on. Leave for 24 hours. (As an alternative, you could use slightly damp cotton wool to swab different surfaces, such as road signs, leaves on trees, window panes and so on.)

3. The squares will now have particles stuck to them. Some will be big enough to see, but most particles will be too small – try looking at them under a microscope. Check the indicator scorecard below: 1 Very little, 2 Little, 3 Medium, 4 High and 5 Very High.  

• Where do you think the particles have come from?
• Record your observations, take pictures or and videos of your results

Parede, Portugal

Perugia, Italy

Bydgoszcz, Poland