Laundry Soap Science Experiment ~ SuperMom Monday

It's science fair project time! (insert sarcastic tone)  Uggghhh....I thought I was done with school.  I guess with kids you never are.  This year was my big girls first year and I gave her some fun ideas.  She didn't seem to excited with any until I told her about a project I did in elementary school where I compared different laundry detergents and saw which one worked best.  Her sweet eyes lit up excited to do the same project I did.  Which just made my eyes well up.  No more sarcastic tone, it's science fair project time!     

The best thing about this experiment is your kiddo really does the majority of the work.  Sometimes science fairs can be some kinda twisted Soccer/Stage/Super Mom competition where you can totally tell the kid didn't hardly touch the thing and their mom is giving some other kids' mom the stink eye.

Typing for your 8 year old is one thing SuperMom's...just say'n  =)

photo source

We picked out four different types of soap ranging in price.  One of which was completely natural but also the second most expensive.  None of the soaps had any extras like oxy or bleach.  You can see from the yellow tent cards she listed the price per fluid ounce.  Mathematicians could figure the cost per load but not me.  

I sacrificed an old cotton tee for her to cut into five squares to be stained.  One square would be un-washed for the control.  

I listed a bunch of fun foods and organic materials she could pick for staining.  She settled on a 24-hour lipstick, ketchup, chocolate sauce and red-clay mud.  I HATE red-clay mud.  Maybe I pushed her a little for this one but that's because I wanted to see if anything would remove it!

 

To make sure all the shirt squares were stained the same she measured them out.

4" line of lipstick

1/4 tsp chocolate sauce rubbed into a circle

1/4 tsp ketchup smeared with a knife

1/4 tsp mud rubbed into a circle

The squares were left out to dry for 24 hours so they had set-in stains.  Before washing she numbered the squares 1-4 with a Sharpie and did the same to the soaps to keep track of what soap washed which square.

Once dry I helped her read the labels and she added the amount of soap that each detergent listed for a small load.  No pre-treating or rubbing soap on the squares either!  Just toss & wash.  Each square was washed all on it's own in cold water and left to air dry.  

Then came the fun part.  Comparing each soap!  Coral's hypothesis was that the most expensive soap would clean the best.  "Why else would it cost the most money Mom?!" said in her most-natural 8 year-old sarcastic tone.  Whoops, I guess I know where she get's her sarcasm....

And she was pretty much right!  And NOTHING touched that lipstick.  You could still see the sparkles!  Here are her findings listed from the best stain-removing laundry soap to the worst (and their cost per fl. oz.):

All ~ 12.4 cents

Arm & Hammer ~ 6.6 cents

Ecos (all natural) ~ 7.0 cents

Oxydol ~ 3.1 cents

I made a chart for her and she took a ruler and colored pens to make a bar graph depicting how each soap cleaned her four stains.

She had fun cutting out all the data that I typed up from her notes she wrote down in her Science Journal and gluing them to her very pink construction paper.  While this was going on I was looking for empty containers to put the laundry soap in so she didn't have to lug around full soap bottles!

 

  Her project got picked to move onto the district science fair and she ended up getting a Silver Medal!  We, I mean she, made an award-winning science experiment.  Whoo Hoo!  Good job Coral, I'm so proud of you!

Do you have any fun science fair project ideas?  I'm going to need TONS with her 4 younger siblings  =)