Hobbies And Interests
Testing Products
Choose a group of different hair products that share a similar purpose or main ingredient. If you are testing more than one type of hair product, group the products you test according to their purpose or main ingredient. For example, you could include a group of shampoos, where surfactants are the main ingredient; hairsprays, whose polymers are the main ingredient and frizz-fighting hair serums, which use silicone or similar smoothing ingredients. Include expensive and inexpensive hair products in your groups. You can find inexpensive samples of high-end hair products at most drugstores, so this doesn't need to cost you much.
Hypothesis
Develop your hypothesis or hypotheses. A hypothesis is a brief statement, one or two sentences long, that states the experimenter's prediction of the action taking place in an experiment. For example, for a group of shampoos, your hypothesis might state that the shampoos work by removing hair oil from the scalp with surfactants. Create a different hypothesis for each group of hair products you are testing.
Designing the Experiment
Set up an experimental protocol for each group of hair products you are testing. In a controlled scientific experiment, a control experiment is performed so that the results of the next experiments can be compared with the control results. A control experiment for a group of shampoos might involve observing the shampoo's action on a strip of cooking oil on a clean plate. Future experiments --- washing greasy hair with shampoo in the shower, washing clean hair with shampoo --- can be compared with the action of the shampoo on the strip of oil to observe how the shampoo appears to work. Set up both a control experiment and experiments under different testing conditions for each group of hair products in your project.
Recording Your Data
Since you might not have the scientific tools and resources necessary to make quantitative observations of the actions of certain hair products, you can make qualitative observations of each of your experiments' results instead. Qualitative observations are detailed descriptions of events that occur in an experiment. For example, you could describe the consistency of shampoo compared with the consistency and texture of cooking oil, hair grease and clean hair. Then you could describe how the oil or hair feels after applying shampoo according to the bottle's instructions. Include as much detail as possible to make your science project thorough.
Reporting Your Results
Summarize and discuss the results of your experiments with different hair products. Reporting your results is an essential part of your science project. The summary with discussion includes important information about the action of the hair products, and it also serves as a place to draw conclusions and make recommendations. Designate a "winner" in each category of hair products --- that is, the hair product that you believe works the best at its intended purpose. Think about whether there is an observable difference among different hair products in the same category, such as more expensive versus less expensive, or among hair products whose main ingredient differs slightly. Include a discussion of how you think the action of different hair products affects the advertising and marketing of those products.