Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hi
I have to do a science research paper review of literature for science class this year, and I chose to do it on bamboo fabrics. I'm not completely sure what I am doing with it yet, but I need to find some scientific journals that have something to do with it. My biggest problem now is that google scholar brings up a lot of results, but most of them are in chinese. I want to figure out what the biggest problem is with the fabric, because it's really eco-friendly, but for some reason, people haven't started using bamboo consistantly in clothing. I was thinking about testing different ways of dying the fabric, and seeing if it loses color or breaks down faster than regular cotton shirts.

If anyone has any information on bamboo fabrics, or ways to dye them it would be a big help.
Thank you!

Dear littlefish47,

I think your topic is very interesting and I like your idea about testing the fabric's ability to retain dye and wear well. However, since the topic is commercial, I think it will be difficult to find scholarly research papers on the subject. If your school gives you access to research databases, I recommend using them instead of Google Scholar, but I tried to use Jstor and I couldn't find anything on the subject. There are many helpful websites that provide a lot of information on the subject, but they are not considered scientific literature. Here are a couple of websites you may think are useful:

http://geartrends.com/geartrends/upload ... _ch4.2.pdf
http://bestecostuff.com/blog/is-bamboo-fabric-green

Good luck!

Hi,

There is a little bit of the history of bamboo textiles at the bottom of this site:

http://www.amazines.com/Bamboo_clothing_related.html

Here is a bit of commercial history of bamboo textiles:

http://www.organictextiles-atsource.com ... tiles.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboo_textiles

http://www.google.com/archivesearch?sou ... e&ct=title

Here is the US Patent issued for making bamboo yarn that made bamboo textiles practical:

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Pars ... PN/7313906

http://www.freshpatents.com/Kinf-of-yar ... 059884.php

Here are a few resources on fibers including bamboo

http://www.dmoz.org/Business/Textiles_a ... d_Studies/

And here is a commercial site talking about dying alternative fibers including bamboo.

http://blog.sweetgeorgiayarns.com/dyein ... -dyeing-2/

Hope this helps a little toward your information search. This sounds like a recent and useful innovation!

Best wishes for success in your paper/project.

Barrett Tomlinson