fairfolio
Saved Projects

Death Rays: Testing the Effectiveness of Different Sunscreen SPFs at Different UV Time Exposures

CSEF · 2017 Product Science (Biological) (Junior Division Only)

Elisa M. Win · Al-Huda Islamic School, Hawthorne, Los Angeles County

Overview

Objectives/Goals The objective of this study is to determine the effective ability of different sunscreen SPFs under different ultraviolet light time exposures. Methods/Materials Sunscreens with SPF 30, 45, 100, E. Coli bacteria, agar plates, 97 degrees Fahrenheit incubator. Tested the effectiveness of sunscreen SPFs by applying sunscreen on agar plates. Applied 2 microliters of the bacterial solution on the agar plates. Agar plates were placed under the UV source for a certain amount of time and were placed in an incubator. Results The number of bacterial colonies that grew was counted to determine the effectiveness of different sunscreen SPFs at different UV time exposures. Several trials were conducted for accurate results. The greater the number of bacterial colonies, the more effective the sunscreen SPF was. SPF 30 was best able to protect the bacteria from the UV source at a UV time exposure of 30 minutes because SPF 30 had the largest number of bacterial colonies. Conclusions/Discussion SPF 30 was most effective in protecting the bacteria from the UV source at a UV time exposure of 30 minutes. It is concluded that consumers should use a sunscreen with SPF 30 to protect themselves from the sun's harmful UV rays in order to prevent unnecessary health issues such as skin cancer from occurring.

Summary statement

I showed that a sunscreen with SPF 30 is more effective in protecting bacteria than a sunscreen with SPF 100.

Help received

I performed the experiments myself. My Science teacher provided supervision during the experimentation process and reviewed my results.

Competition history

  • CSEF 2017 Product Science (Biological) (Junior Division Only) · Entry J2016

Resources

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

Source: California Science & Engineering Fair public projects

Save projects to your library

Sign in with Google to keep track of projects you find interesting, organized into folders. An account also raises your daily allowance for “Has this been done?”, and lets you create a key for the MCP server with a much higher limit than anonymous use. Browsing stays public.

Continue with Google