Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

My daughter is in the 7th Grade and is doing a variation of the Alternative Sources of Paper Fiber project idea found at:
https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... fiber#help
She wants to go to the landfill and pick different types of paper products, recycle them, and then turn them into paper to see which types of recycle paper makes the best paper to write or paint on. Her teach likes the idea but is worried that she is unable to scientifically measure which paper produced is the best. We could use some ideas on how to measure this experiment. How do we test the produced paper in a way that is the same for all of them? Any help on this idea would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Hi rhollin61,
This sounds like a great / fun experiment!

I have a couple of suggestions for you / your daughter's consideration on the testing:
1. Measure how well the paper absorb ink. I am picturing something like using ink from an ink jet printer and using a eye dropper, you drop the ink onto the stack of the recycled paper (or the same sheet but folded / cut into smaller pieces) and see how many sheet did the ink "bleed" through. Similarly, you can measure how large of a "spread" did the ink drop create and that will be a second data point.

2. Measure the density of the recycle paper - For this one, I was thinking something along the line of shining a laser through the paper. You will measure how many sheet it takes to stop the laser from showing through.

I hope that helps. Please post again if there's anything else we can do to help!
Willey