Testing Hand Soap Effectiveness
Microbiology- Grade:
- 12
- Teacher:
- Viktoriya Yurkiv
This study is aimed to test the effectiveness of hand soap. Hand soap effectiveness is important because we rely on it to keep us healthy and clean. During the Covid-19 pandemic an influx in demand in hand soap and hand sanitizer put a strain on the market leading to increased demand. Due to this, brands began to market more heavily on the benefits of their hand soap to gain customer attention. They also began to increase the aesthetic, marketing, and scents leading customers to believe that their soap was more effective than it might appear. This study will investigate how effective two brands are compared to each other. The primary method of testing is the area of inoculation technique. This technique involves placing a circle of liquid and measuring out how much area was inoculated. During this experiment two contrasting soaps are tested. Soap 1 is a foaming hand soap designed to provide a strong scent and aesthetic with a visually appealing bottle at a higher cost point. Soap 2 is a liquid hand soap with less of a scent designed to be more simple and designed in a more discrete fashion with less graphics and a clear bottle and a low cost point. The experiment included cultivating petri dishes with Staphylococcus Epidermidis, placing three dots of soap solution in each petri dish. This was repeated with different dilutions of soap. The results of this experiment showed that soap 2 proved to be more effective in all dilutions, killing more bacteria in its area measured in centimeters. The effectiveness of soap 2 could be due to the fact that it included more active ingredients (such as alcohol) and less scent ingredients (such as perfume). One inconsistency in the results that was observed was that the 75% soap dilution test seemed to yield a different result. It showed a drastically smaller area of inoculation than the rest of the dilutions. It is believed that an incubator malfunction occurred during this test drying the solution up faster than the rest of the tests.
Great job!! I like how you have taken a topic that seems overworked and made a good experiment out of it with comparisons of cheap to expensive soaps, and why they may or may not be as effective at killing bacteria!