Soap Wars: Comparing Dishwashing Liquids in Oil Spill Cleanups

Overview

Objectives/Goals My objective was to determine if there was another dishwashing soap that can clean oiled birds as well as Dawn. I hypothesized that another brand of dishwashing soap will clean oiled birds just as well as Dawn, which is currently used by rehabilitation centers. Methods/Materials I soaked a duck feather in motor oil and cleaned it with Dawn. I repeated this process with four other feathers and four other dishwashing liquids. The cleaning process was timed and the number of cleaning attempts, until there was no longer any visible residue, was noted. Results Three of the five dishwashing liquids took 3 or more cleaning attempts. Dawn and Seventh Generation each took two cleaning attempts to remove the oil from the duck feather. Conclusions/Discussion Although Dawn and Seventh Generation appeared to have the same number of cleaning attempts, oil residue was discovered to have soaked onto the project board days later. It is now clear that Seventh Generation worked the best at cleaning the feathers. As can be seen on my board, Seventh Generation has the closest shape to the original feather and Dawn has residue. It is clear that other factors are used by rehabilitation centers when determining which product to use.

Awards (1)

• Second Place

Competition history

• CSEF 2015 Product Science (Physical) (Junior Division Only) · Entry J2011

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

Related projects

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

Browse more like this

• All Physical Sciences projects
• CSEF Physical Sciences projects
• Every CSEF 2015 project
• CSEF Second Place winners