Detergent Lab

Josh, Markus, Ethan and T.J.
Laundry detergent fair test

Aim:
​Our aim is to determine which laundry detergent cleans a stained rag the best. We want to determine if Woolite costs too much for how well it cleans compared to other detergents.

Hypothesis:
​Tide is going to clean the stained rag the best and the no name is going to clean it the worst. Woolite and sunlight are going to clean it relatively well, however Tide will be better.

​If we wash the rag in tap temperature water for 13:45 seconds then Tide will clean it the best.

Prediction:
​We predict that that the piece of rag cleaned with Tide will be the cleanest.

Materials:
​1 old rag​4 laundry detergents:(Tide, Woolite, Sunlight, Ultrafresh) 5 drops of each
​5x 400 ml beakers​250ml of tap temperature water in each beaker
​5 stir sticks​1 graduated cylinder (250 ml)

Procedure:
1. Cut the rag into 5 even sized sections
2. Fill the 5 beakers with 250ml of water
3. Put 5 drops of Tide in one beaker
4. Put 5 drops of Sunlight in the second beaker
5. Put 5 drops of Woolite in the third beaker
6. Put 5 drops of Ultrafresh in the fourth beaker
7. Leave the fifth beaker with just water
8. Stir each beaker for 5 seconds
9. Put a section of the rag in each beaker simultaneously
10. Let the rags soak for 5 minutes
11. Stir each rag slowly for 1 minute
12. Then stir quickly for 1 minute
13. Soak the rags for an additional 5 minutes and 45 seconds
14. Stir for another minute
15. Remove the rags and ring them out five times each

Observations:
• Woolite water was dirtiest after stirring
• The water had dirtier water than the ultra fresh after stirring
• Tide and sunlight look to have cleaned the rag relatively well, but Woolite did the best job so far
• After the second stir the rag in the water is the dirtiest
• The rag in the woolite looks the cleanest
• Once we rung them out the rag that was in Sunlight looks the cleanest.
• The rags in Woolite and tide are still pretty dirty
• The ones in water and Ultra were the dirtiest
• Tide cleaned the rag the best on both sides.
• Water was the dirtiest.
• The rag cleaned in Tide smells the best.

Conclusion:
From the experiment, we can conclude that Tide did the best job at cleaning the dirty rag. When we looked at the rag both sides were much cleaner than the other rags. Woolite cleaned the rag the second best, because one side wasn’t as clean as the other side. The rag cleaned with Sunlight had some stains left. Ultra Fresh left a lot of stains and water failed to clean anything. From our results Woolite is ripping you off because Tide cleaned the rag the best.