Resolving Estuary Pollution Through Implementation of A Static Mechanical System Utilizing a Net Transported With Timing Belts and Motorized Linear Systems

Estuary pollution has become a large problem recently. With the advancement of human technology, more trash gets dispersed into bodies of water that eventually lead into the ocean and become microplastics. To potentially combat this problem, a device was made using motorized linear systems with a combination of a net to reduce the amount of trash that reaches the oceans. The purpose of this project is to reduce manual labor and consistently remove trash without the need for volunteer groups. The project will be considered successful if the device can collect at least half of the 20,000 milligrams of trash. To do this, the device was built using a horizontal linear motor with a net attached to two motors and was pulled by gluing it to two timing belts on two linear motors placed on wooden supports in a plastic container with rocks, dirt, and trash. Overall the device was accurate but not precise, averaging 851 milligrams per test. The null hypothesis was that the trash collected was equal to half of the total sample. The calculated χ^2 value of the experiment, 929.749, was greater than the critical value of 16.919, meaning that this is not sufficient evidence to support the hypothesis and therefure concluded with the rejection of the null hypothesis. The results of this experiment were not significant due to the p-value being less than the α-value of 0.05