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Hi-
I'm doing a science fair project on the effects of different ingredients of hand lotion on regenerating dry skin. What kind of equipment should I use to test this?
Thanks
Effect of Hand Lotion on Skin
Moderators: AmyCowen, kgudger, MadelineB, Moderators
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baum23
- Posts: 1
- Joined: Tue Oct 22, 2013 3:09 pm
- Occupation: Student: 10th grade
- Project Question: How different ingredients in moisturizers are in affectingly treating dry skin
- Project Due Date: February 28th, 2014
- Project Status: I am just starting
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SciB
- Expert
- Posts: 2071
- Joined: Fri Feb 01, 2013 7:00 am
- Occupation: Retired molecular biologist, university researcher and teacher
- Project Question: I wish to join Scibuddies to be able to help students achieve the best science project possible and to understand the science behind it.
- Project Due Date: n/a
- Project Status: Not applicable
Re: Effect of Hand Lotion on Skin
Hi,
The chemistry of skin care products is a highly interesting subject and lots of people have ideas about what works best for them, so your project would be useful. If you have ever read the label on a bottle of hand lotion you know the stuff contains many ingredients—some like lanolin or petrolatum are emollients that soften the skin but others are stabilizers, preservatives, pH balancers, antioxidants, UV blockers, and more.
What ingredients were you planning on testing and how were you going to test them? I would think it would be simpler to use a cross-section of products that are already approved for skin care and which vary in their ingredients. You could pick one where the first ingredient is lanolin, one with petrolatum, and so on until you had a group that represents a variety of main ingredients.
Now the problem is how to test them. You could ask your family and friends try them for a week then answer a questionnaire about how well they worked. You would need to get some plastic squeeze bottles and transfer some of each product into them for your friends to use so they would not be able to tell which product they are using. If you had four products and 5 or 6 friends testing them, I would think that would give you enough data to conclude which of the products worked the best.
Repost to this thread with your ideas on this project and we will try to steer you in the right direction.
Best wishes,
Sybee
The chemistry of skin care products is a highly interesting subject and lots of people have ideas about what works best for them, so your project would be useful. If you have ever read the label on a bottle of hand lotion you know the stuff contains many ingredients—some like lanolin or petrolatum are emollients that soften the skin but others are stabilizers, preservatives, pH balancers, antioxidants, UV blockers, and more.
What ingredients were you planning on testing and how were you going to test them? I would think it would be simpler to use a cross-section of products that are already approved for skin care and which vary in their ingredients. You could pick one where the first ingredient is lanolin, one with petrolatum, and so on until you had a group that represents a variety of main ingredients.
Now the problem is how to test them. You could ask your family and friends try them for a week then answer a questionnaire about how well they worked. You would need to get some plastic squeeze bottles and transfer some of each product into them for your friends to use so they would not be able to tell which product they are using. If you had four products and 5 or 6 friends testing them, I would think that would give you enough data to conclude which of the products worked the best.
Repost to this thread with your ideas on this project and we will try to steer you in the right direction.
Best wishes,
Sybee