Which brand of shampoo produces the most lather?

Introduction

  Of all the cosmetic products sold in the world, the biggest group is hair care cosmetics, basically shampoo and conditioners.   It is safe to wash your hair everyday with these products.  These products help repair sun damage that some people can get.  Almost everybody uses shampoo and conditioner on a daily basis but do you know what is in these products that you use everyday?  There are several ingredients in shampoos.  Of course, the main ingredient is soap since the main purpose of shampoo is to clean your hair.  Many companies often add special additives like aloe vera in the end phrase of the production in order to prevent the scalp from getting dried out. For dry hair they may add some oily substances to replace the natural wax of the hair that was removed by the soap.  Another thing you might not know about shampoos is that a very famous woman helped to make them more popular.

One night Sarah Breedlove had a dream that a man told her to mix together some things and put the mixture on her head.  She put the mixture on her head the next day. Her hair started to grow in the next two weeks. As soon as she saw that her hair was growing she out to sale it.

She sold the products and she made millions of dollars. She produced a line of combs and shampoos for black women.  The best thing about it was that she was the first woman to make a million dollars.  You may know her as Madame C.J. Walker.

Since soap is the main ingredient in shampoo, it is important to know how shampoo works.  Soil and dirt are attracted to a substance because they have opposite electrical charges.  Water forms a double layer around these particles but it is often not enough to remove it.  Adding soap to the mixture replaces the original bonds between the soil and substance.  When water is added, the soil particles are now easily removed and washed away.

First choice for our project was Herbal Essences. They have moister balancing for normal hair, which is made with natural chamomile, aloe vera, & passionflower. It’s known for making hair more silky and soft. Next, we used Suave because it has a lot of protein and aloe vera. It is proven to renew your hair’s health.  Last but not least, we have Finesse. It has a lot of silk protein in it. It adds extra health to thin and thick hair.  We wanted to find out how much lather these shampoos produce and which cleans hair and leaves it feeling the best.

PURPOSE

HYPOTHESIS 

We think Herbal Essences will have the most lather because it has the best ingredients and the most soap compared to Head and Shoulders and Suave!

MATERIALS LIST

1. HERBAL ESSENCES SHAMPOO

2. SUAVE SHAMPOO

3. FINNESSE SHAMPOO

4. PIPPETES 

5. GRADUATED CYLINDERS

6. DE-IONIZED WATER

7. CONSTRUCTION PAPER

PROCEDURE

 First collect one milliliter of one shampoo with a pipette.  Squirt into a graduated cylinder and add 50 milliliters of de-ionized water.  Put your hand over the top tightly and shake it for 60 seconds. Then we measure the lather with the graduated cylinder. We then repeated the process with the other shampoos.

To measure the quality of the shampoo, we had three people wash their hair with the shampoos and tell us how much they liked it.

Results

Shampoo Lather

Conclusion

Our experiment concluded that Suave has more foam than Herbal Essences and Finesse by 75ml.  We believe our hypothesis was wrong because Suave has different ingredients, which could have affected the outcome.  On our second experiment our volunteer liked the Finesse shampoo the best out of the three because he liked how his hair felt after washing. It left his hair feeling softer and cleaner.