Tuesday, September 12, 2006

My Daughter's Science Project

Thought I would share my daughters science project.

Jut a quick observation: I had no idea that lipstick was so tough to get out.
But I guess that’s a good thing for a married guy not to know.

Soap Project


Problem:

Do all detergents work the same and get the same stains out? Which of these three detergents: “Arm and Hammer”, “Purex” and “All”, works better to get stains out ?

Hypothesis

I think that “All” would work the best because it is the most expensive of the three and I would assume that it had the best ingredients and quality. I think “Arm And Hammer” and “Purex” will do poorly because they are the least expensive and I would assume that they have lower quality soap.

Experiment

For my experiment, I used three pieces cut from a 100% cotton T-shirt. I stained each material with grass and dirt, lipstick and grape juice. First I put 1 cup of Arm and Hammer into my washing machine and set it for 2 minutes on warm/cool. When it was done, I noticed that none of the stains were totally gone, most of the grape juice was gone, none of the lipstick was gone and part of the grass stain was gone. I labeled my experiment and went on to the next detergent. Next, I used “Purex”. I did the same thing and when I took it out I didn’t really do anything. All of the stains were there and the only stain that looked a little lighter was the grape juice. Last I tried “All”. I used the same process as the other two and it turned out that the most expensive one did the worst. All of the stains looked about the same. My hypothesis was incorrect.



Conclusion

My hypothesis was wrong. “All” did the worst and it was the most expensive. Arm and Hammer did the best and it was the cheapest one of the three. I am very surprised with these results and I learned that advertisements and price aren’t really how you can tell if a brand is good or not.



My daughter was thinking about what stains she should use for this experiment. I jokingly said to her "Hey I have a great idea" which prompted the illustration below.



2 comments:

unca said...

Hope, this is great work. I think you should send this to Arm and Hammer (I'm serious) and see if they respond. As for the last stain, well, keep us posted on that.

Anonymous said...

thanks for the laundry tip (would never have thought of trying arm & hammer)!