I NEED HELP!!! PLEASE!!!!! I'M DESPERATE!!!!!!!

[nana]

THANK YOU FOR READING... READ ON!!!!!!!!!!!
ok so my project is on how hair chemicals, like hair dye or a perm. i already know how i will test out that part but i have no idea how i should test the damage. a friend had suggested that i count all the split endes but that will take to long and its too hard plus i'm testing it on the human hair that you buy at the stores so i don't know what i should do. so should i just change my topic ( even though its a little late for that) or do you have any suggestions[/b]. PLEASE! i will take anything. THANK YOU so much i am really grateful

[MelissaB]

Nana,

Please note that this is a message board, not a chat room, so it will take 24-48 hours for an expert to reply to you. Please keep all of your posts in a single topic rather than posting multiple messages--it will not make the experts help you any faster. I have left one topic here, because I suspect you may be in this grade level and it seems as if this is a physical sciences question. If you would like me to move it to a more appropriate grade level or prefer posting in the life sciences forum, please reply to this message (do not click 'new topic') and we (the moderators of the board) will move it to the appropriate location.

I think that your project sounds really interesting, and you are right that it may be difficult to measure the damage. I would suggest several methods. First, you could take a look at the hair before or after dying or perming it under a microscope, take pictures, and rate damage on some sort of scale. As your friend suggests, you could also count number of split ends. I might suggest brushing the hair a standard number of times after the damaging treatment, because I find my own hair breaks more often when I am doing something to it. You could then count a subset of the hairs--no one would suggest you count them all!--and see what proportion of hairs have split ends, and if that differs between the treatments.

[deleted-71709]

Hello, Nana.

I am one of the experts in the physical sciences group that Melissa has recruited to help students such as yourself.

I must say, Melissa has done a very good job giving you some great ideas to try.

I know that people who develop hair products use studies under the microscope quite a lot. You can really tell a lot about hair by looking at it under the microscope. Melissa's idea of taking photos is an excellent one. It will give you a better opportunity to study the differences in the appearance of the hair with each product. One thing you want to control as well as you can is the lighting for the microscope. Different reflections off the hair might cause you to see things in one sample you could not see in another if it had different lighting. You can probably find someone at your school who could help you locate a microscope to use.

If you choose to count split ends, take Melissa's suggestion. Sample a few hairs and count the split ones in that sample. Here is a web site I found that describes basic methods in statistics you might want to use to collect and analyze your data:

http://www.sportsci.org/resource/stats/summarize.html

If you have any more questions, leave a post on the board and an expert will help you.

Ed Neu
Buffalo, MN