Determine Your Detergent

Overview

Objectives/Goals My objective was to determine which laundry detergent, Tide, Dreft baby detergent, Planet Organic detergent, provides less pH after washing. Methods/Materials Materials: Washing Machine, Tide Laundry Detergent, Dreft Laundry Detergent, Planet Organic Laundry Detergent, Electronic Metric Weight calculator, pH Meter, 42 L Water, 2kg clothes, Cups for recording water samples. Method: 1. Measure the recommended amount of detergent for 2kg load of clothes 2. Placed the designated amount of clothing for recommended sample into the washing machine and set the washing machine to cold water 3. Dissolve recommended amount of Tide detergent into washing machine 4. Take a sample of the dissolved water and measure its pH. Record data. 5. Wait until the clean cycle ended. Once rinse cycle began, obtained another sample and measure the pH. Record data 6. Wait until the water goes down. Restart the cycle and let water gather with the clothes still in the machine. Obtain a sample and measure pH. Record data. 7. Wait until the Rinse cycle begins. Once the water collected again, obtain a sample and measure the pH. Record data. 8. Repeat steps 2-7 with half the recommended amount of detergent 9. Repeat steps 1-8 with a Dreft laundry detergent 10. Repeat steps 1-9 with a Planet Organic Laundry detergent Results The Dreft baby laundry detergent provided the lowest pH and less excess laundry detergent after the wash cycle. Conclusions/Discussion The results were not as I had predicted. I believed that the Planet Organic laundry detergent would have less pH after washing because the detergent was supposedly chemical free and organic. However, it was the Dreft baby detergent that showed less pH in all of the testing. This makes sense as the detergent is made for babies and therefore is focused on providing less chemicals to harm the baby's skin and cause skin rashes and other skin diseases.

Competition history

• CSEF 2011 Product Science (Physical) (Junior Division Only) · Entry J2113

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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