Gracyn K
September 22, 2015
Laundry Detergent Lab
Aim: The aim is to compare 4 different detergents to find which detergent works the best at
washing a mustard stain out of a piece of cloth.
Hypothesis: Will the detergent that costs $5 dollars more (Woolite) wash out the stain better
than the popular detergents (Sunlight & Tide) and the cheap detergent (Ultra), or will the $5
more detergent be a rip off?
Prediction: I predict that the $5 more one will be a rip off and will get the stain out just as well
as the Tide and Sunlight, and that the Ultra (the cheap detergent) will not get the stain out as
well as Woolite, Tide, and Sunlight.
Materials:
5 beakers
1 graduated cylinder
5 stirring sticks
White cloth
Mustard
Scissors
4 different detergents (Woolite, Tide, Sunshine, Ultra)
Thumbtacks
Water
Procedure:
1. Take a white cloth and smear the entire cloth evenly with mustard. Let the mustard dry.
2. Cut up the stained cloth into 5 pieces. This makes sure that the fabric is the same between
the 5 pieces.
3. Take 5 beakers and label them Woolite, Tide, Sunlight, Ultra, and water.
4. Pour 250mL of water into each of the 5 beakers. Put a stir stick in each.
5. Put 5 drops of the corresponding detergent into the Woolite, Sunlight, Tide and Ultra
beakers, leaving the beaker labelled water with no detergent.
6. Place the cloths into each of the beakers and stir the cloths 30 times, making sure the
speed and time of stirring is equal in each. Then let the cloths soak in the water for 5
minutes. Stir 30 more times and let sit for another 5 minutes.
7. Go to the sink and rinse each cloth in water for 20 seconds. Ring out the cloths and pin
them to the wall for them to dry.
Observations:
 After we stirred the cloths for the second time, the water seemed to get a lot more soapy
and yellow in all 5 beakers.
 After we took out the cloths and rinsed them off, we looked at the water in the beakers
and saw that the water in Ultra and "Water" seemed to be cleaner. The water in Tide and
Woolite seemed the most yellow.
 Once they were all dry, we took them off the wall and were surprised to see that the stain
came out a little bit. I thought that since mustard is just about impossible to get out with
any detergent that the stain wouldn’t come out at all, but the top layer of mustard
actually came out!
Conclusions: In all of them (even the water), the top layer of mustard came out. None of the
detergents got the mustard stain out fully, but this is the rankings of which detergent got out
the stain the best.
Rankings:
1. Sunlight
2. Tide
3. Woolite
4. Ultra
5. Water
My prediction turned out to be partially correct. The Ultra and water got the stain out the worst
(which was my prediction), but the Sunlight turned out to get the stain out the best- which
wasn’t my prediction. I thought Tide, Sunlight, and Woolite would all tie for getting the stain
out the best.
Questions: The next step that I would take to further the investigation is try a different thing to
stain the cloth with. If I didn’t use mustard, and used different things like dirt or ketchup, it
probably would've been easier to see which detergent worked the best. Also, would different
types of stains work better with different detergents?
The other thing I would do is try different fabrics. We used a cloth made of cotton, but if we
used linen would the outcome be different?