I need help

[cubby1]

Hi everyone, I am doing an experiment to see what beverage stains teeth the most. Obviously, I cannot use teeth because that would be creepy so I am conducting my experiment on eggshells. My question is how should I measure the eggshell's color at the end of the week after they have all had enough time to stain.

[Ultra]

Cubby1,

Thank you for using the Science Buddies fora. I have a suggestion for one possible route you might try. This might seem a bit obscure, but computers use dots called pixels to create pictures. Each set of pixels is composed of one red pixel, one green pixel, and one blue pixel. The brightness of each individual colored pixel combines to yield the color you see on your computer screen.

My suggestion is that you set up a very constant anchor and surroundings for a camera and take pictures of the results of each trial. Make sure that the eggshells are the same size and orientation and that the camera sees the same amount and parts of the eggshells each time. I would suggest mounting your camera/phone on a tripod in front of a solid-colored table cloth. If all other variables (amount of light in the room, shadows from photographer, amount of eggshell exposed to camera, camera angle, brightness of camera flash, etc.) are controlled and kept constant, the only thing changing the picture's color and brightness values (called RGB values, meaning Red, Green, Blue) should be the color and brightness of each eggshell.

Once you have your highly specific and consistent pictures, use software like http://www.inkintelligent.com/wp-conten ... _Guide.pdf to extract average color values for each eggshell trial.

To graph your results, I would recommend a stacked bar graph with three bars (one for each color) in each stack.

I hope that my answer is helpful. If you have any further questions, please feel free to post them on this thread.

[cubby1]

thank you!

[cubby1]

Also, what would be a good, catchy title for this project

[Ultra]

Hello, again, Cubby1.

I am sorry that I took a bit longer to respond to your post this time.

Please note that as you advance in your science career, (i.e., in college-level science classes) it becomes less important to have a catchy name. Colleges tend to prefer more scientific names, like "Effects of <independent variable> on <dependent variable>." However, in middle school, you have the luxury of choice. Since you asked for catchy title suggestions, here are some thoughts:

Anything with eggs (this is a common path to go down for experiments (or even eggs-periments) that deal with eggs) -- specific options include "Egg-stra Careful," "Pearly Egg Whites," (which works on multiple levels -- egg whites and "pearly whites" which is slang for teeth) "Shell Game," "Egg-stra Color," etc.

Other routes:
"DIY DYE"
"What You Don't Drink Can't Hurt You"
"Beverage Hills"
"A Hue-ge Mistake"

Some of these suggestions are clearly better than others. I wanted to leave you with a bunch of ideas so that you could find one you like or at least find some inspiration.


I hope I have helped. Let me know if I can be of further assistance.

[cubby1]

Thank you, Ultra, those were all very good titles.Also, I was attempting to using studio j to average out the eggshells' colors but it was confusing. So, I was wondering if there's another route that I could take to graph my eggshells colors other than studio j.
Thanks for all your help.

[Ultra]

Cubby1,

This looks like it should be easier. Try using this program: http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/color-summarizer/?home. It seems like it has a decent set of instructions and plenty of examples.

I agree that the other set of instructions seemed a bit overcomplicated.

If you have trouble running this software, let me know what issues you have and I will try to get it working on my end so that I can help you troubleshoot.

[cubby1]

Thank you so much! I have got it to work, but now im wandering which numbers i should average out to determine the eggshells average color, if that makes sense. Sorry I have so many questions.

[Ultra]

Cubby1,

I believe that the program computes the average for you. All that is necessary is to find the table of values (an example is given towards the bottom of the page that I linked before).

You should include the average red, green, and blue values as separate data on the graph. I highly recommend a stacked bar graph with three components (a red, a green, and a blue) in each stack. Shorter stacks indicate darker colors, as 0 represents no color (pure black).

Thank you for your patience.