Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hello, my daughter is doing a science fair project. She has to find out which works best at cleaning grease, shampoo, dish detergent, or hand soap. The experiment that we did didn't give clear results. We need help on coming out with a different way to test it. We ended up using 3 test tubes and adding 4 drops of oil. Next we added water and the diff. detergents.

Here are some recent forum posts that might give you some good resources and ideas for your experiment.

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... =26&t=9219

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... =29&t=6728

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... =37&t=6151

Audrey

helpneeded wrote:She has to find out which works best at cleaning grease, shampoo, dish detergent, or hand soap.

As I read this with an engineer's perspective and start parsing it, I come up with more questions:
"cleaning grease" from what? using what process? and what results comparison methods?
Is "oil" equivalent to "grease"?
What were your results?

"degreasing" something is usually a process where you transfer the grease onto/into something else to get it off/out of what you want cleaned.
Typically this involves some kind of physical movement of some cleaning/absorbing material, like
1) Presure washer where you use a high pressure spray of a solvent to erode and splatter the grease/oil somewhere else
2) Wiping with towel/sponge to transfer the grease/oil into the towel/sponge
3) Submersion in water and scrubbing/agitating so that the grease/oil floats and can be skimmed off or decanted

Assuming, liquid hand soap...
Let me guess your results, a glass surface with a very small amount of grease was easily cleaned by all of you liquid cleaners so you didn't see any significant difference. Am I close or not?

I am using 3 different soap's to clean oil

Hi 471585,

I'm not sure what your question is. Will you please provide some more details about what your question and hypothesis are? It will make it much easier for us to help you if we know what you are doing.