Non-Scent Of Soap Essay

The purpose of this experiment was to see if different fragrances affected a soap’s antibacterial properties. In this experiment, non-scented Alconox soap was used as the control. The experimental groups consisted of Joy lemon dishwashing soap, Dawn Escapes New Zealand Springs dishwashing soap, and the soap from the campus bathroom dispenser. The subject’s hands were washed with each of these soaps for approximately 30 seconds with each soap. The subject’s right hand was swabbed for each sample. It was hypothesized that the scent of the soap would affect the soap’s ability to kill bacteria during handwashing.
Based on how much bacterial growth occurred after using each soap, it was determined that the un-scented Alconox soap, which was the …show more content…
First, the subject forgot to keep count of how long they were washing their hands, so it could have skewed the results, favoring one over another. It was estimated that their hands were being washed approximately 30 seconds per trial, but that may or may not be an accurate estimate. In the future, time should be recorded using a stopwatch or a similar device to get an accurate measure of how long the hands are being washed. It was more or less constant, but there was no guarantee that the hands were being washed for the same amount of time, so more control would be need to be exhibited in order to keep variables constant for each trial in the experiment. Secondly, what was touched by the subject in between handwashings could have also affected the results. Lastly, it probably would have been a good idea to swab the subject’s hands before using any of the soaps. That could have offered as a “baseline” for the experiment. How can one know that any of the soaps worked better than the other without getting a baseline swab? In the future, a pre-washing sample should be taken before beginning the experiment to help ensure the accuracy. Taking that idea one step further, pre-washing swabs could be taken before each experimental trial as