Oil spill clean up lab

Purpose
The purpose of this experiment was to test which items out of dish soap, a spoon, cotton balls and a spounge could contain and absorb a controlled oil spill the quickest and efficienly.

Hypothesis
If dish soap, a spoon, 10 cotton balls and a spounge are used to clean up an oil spill, then 90% of the oil will be contained and 80% will be contained.

Variables
Independent variables: dish soap, cotton balls, spoon, spounge
Dependant variable: how much oil is absorbed and contained
Controlled variable: The amount of crude oil, number of items used

Materials list
- 1 spounge
-10 cotton balls
-25ml of soap
- spoon

Procedure
1) put dish soap in the water
2) put spounge on the contained oil and move slowly to absorb
3) put cotton balls on the spoon, move the spoon to let the cotton balls absorb the oil
4) use spoon to collect cotton balls then place them on the surface

Discussion

In my hypothesis, i guessed that using dish soap, a spoon, 10 cotton balls and a spounge would contain 90% of the oil spill and absorb 80% of it. My hypothesis was half right as 90% of the spill was contained. The second part of my hypothesis was wrong but instead of the absorbtion rate being lower, it was higher. The four items were able to absorb 95% of the spill

There were many steps to doing this experiment and alot of reasons why i did it. This experiment was to test how to clean up an oil spill effinciantly with limited reasources. If this would be sucessful, it would give people a better understanding on how to clean oil spills with unlimited resources. The steps to doing this experiment were quite simple. Firstly we poured half a cup of dish soap(25 ml) into the oil spill. Once some of the oil was contained from soap, i put the soap over top of it and moved it around slowly to absorb the oil. After that we placed cotton balls on the spoon and moved them around slowly to absorb oil. Afterwards, we picked the cottonballs out of the water and placed them on the surface. The main variables for this was the items used(independant), how much oil was obtained(dependant) and the amount of crude oil and items used(controlled)

The outcome of the experiment was sucsess on many levels. Firstly,the absorbtion rate increased and the containment rate stayed the same. As shown in table one, the dish soap and the spoon contained 80% and 10%(90% overall) respectivly. The spounge and the 10 cotton balls contained a total of 0% proving innefective. For absorbtion, the spounge absorbed 70%, the 10 cotton balls absorbed 20% and the spoon absorbed 10% of the oil. In all, the experiment was a sucsess.

All in all, the lab proved to be a sucsess. Even though it was sucessful there would be a couple of things i would change to make this affective on a higher scale. The things I would change would be the size of the oil spill and the materials to simulate an ocean oil spill. In the testing of this lab no problems were identified

Conclusion
This experiment demonstrated an oil spill with limited materials and proved sucsessful. In the end, my hypothesis was supported by the results of the lab.