Jean Lab

       This lab was done to demonstrate the properties of bleach and its effect on jeans. It was done to see if various concentrations of bleach solutions jeans were submerged in changed the jeans any differently. From this lab I learned that even though all the solutions we created contained bleach, the most destructive was the 100% bleach solution. I also did not expect the 12.5% bleach concentration to change the jeans, but I found that even the smallest bit of bleach has an affect on jeans. This helped me understand the concept we were told in class that bleach is extremely strong and will break down and discolor items. I did not understand the full extent of the bleach's ability to change durable jean squares. Based on my experience from this lab, I could apply this to bleaching my own jeans at home. I have a pair of nice jeans, but I like the vintage look bleach can give them. I will apply this at home and test it out with a diluted bleach solution when the jeans will be in the solution for short periods of time. Overall, this lab displayed to me the properties of bleach and that human error can alter data and results.

       During this lab experiment, the question we were trying to answer was essentially 'how will various bleach solutions alter jean squares and cause them to break down and lose their color'. After conducting our experiment, we discovered that a 100% concentration of bleach caused the most damage to the jean squares. In other words, the more bleach in the solution we soaked the jeans in, the more they became faded and worn. The 100% bleach solution caused an average rating of 6 for color removal, and 2.3 for fabric damage. The averages for both of these categories decreased as less bleach was added into the other solutions. This data does however show that bleach causes more color damage than fabric damage. A few edges of the jeans were a little bit frayed, but the color change in the jeans was very apparent and alarming. Common knowledge is that bleach breaks down and whitens items, in fact that is what it is usually advertised for doing. This information supports our results of this experiment. This data supports our claim about bleach having destructive properties because clearly, a stronger bleach solution altered the jeans in the most drastic way.

     Although an ideal experiment would have no flaws, they are bound to happen, but they must be addressed and discussed. While our hypothesis was supported by our data, there could have been errors due to the way we submerged our jean squares to stop the bleaching process. We were supposed to submerge the squares in a petri dish with 20 mL of water, but instead we submerged them in 20 mL of water in a glass beaker. The jean squares were much further under the water in the glass beaker, rather than just being slightly under the surface of the water in the petri dish. This could have impacted our data because the submerged squares may have been in too much water for too long, stopping the bleaching process too quickly. A recommendation I have to fix this next time is to simply use the petri dish and read the directions more carefully. Another problem we encountered was we slightly altered the times of the jean squares in the bleach each time. This could have caused outliers in the data or random spikes and dips in an otherwise constant trend of data. My solution is to use a stopwatch to be as precise as possible.