A graduate student filtered a liter of seawater using a Millipore filter membrane of 2 $\mu$m pore size. Which of the following is true about his filtrate?

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The pore size of the filter membrane (2 micrometers) is small enough to filter out microplanktons but not small enough to filter out picoplanktons, which have a size range of 0.2-2 micrometers. Therefore, the filtrate would contain picoplanktons. The question does not provide enough information to determine if the filtrate is sterile or contains nanoplanktons, so options A, B, D, and E cannot be chosen with certainty.

A Graduate Student Filtered a Liter of Seawater Using a Millipore