Method?

well..... apparently, i dont have a method up....... which is weird, seeing that i posted it in my second blog entry. -.-

but oh wells. i'll just post it again. but in report form! yeah!

This experiment was conducted at home, with no exposure to the sun, and at a moderate room temperature. In this experiment, four types of paper were used: 90 gsm (matt), 135 gsm (glossy), 135 gsm (matt), and 15 gsm tissue paper. All of the samples were 1cm by 4cm in size. Two liquids were used: water, and white vinegar. Two dishes of 90gsm paper were used, instead of one, and they were the control.

Each piece of paper was labelled and placed into a dish. One tablespoon of either water or vinegar was added to the dish, and submerged. The dishes were left to sit for 6 days. Photos were taken every 24 hours, and the samples were stirred.

To prevent foreign particles from contaminating the samples, cling wrap was placed over the dishes so nothing would fall in.

should i attach some photos?...... hmmm...... ok.

and yes, i am posting all this stuff in a weird order.... but hey, at least its up! :)

Observation/discussion....

So, i've done my experiment now...... these are my observations.

First Day

After 24 hours, the paper has not seemed to have changed. The purple highlighter applied to the samples in water however, had been absorbed into the water, unlike the pink in the vinegar. This was a result that I was not expecting, so I set up a mini-experiment to see whether it was the vinegar that was slowing the absorption of the highlighter, or the actual highlighter that was hard to absorb.

** I noticed that the purple highlighter mark on the paper in the water had been completely dissolved, while the pink highlighter on the vinegar samples were the same as before. I was not sure whether that was because I used different types of highlighters, or because the vinegar was actually keeping it on the paper, so I added one pink strip to water, and one purple strip to vinegar to see if the results were consistent.

Second Day

After a further 24 hours, not much had changed in my makeshift petri dishes, but upon closer inspection, I observed that there were shadows in the water of the glossy 135gsm sample, indicating that there were particles in the water. However, these particles were too small to be seen by my eye, and the only way I saw them was because of the shadow it cast. I examined the other samples to see if these particles were also present, and I found some in all of the 135gsm samples, both glossy and matt, and in both water and vinegar. There were no particles that I could see in the 90 gsm and tissue paper samples though, which I thought was unusual.

Third Day

At the end of the third day, there was still no noticeable change in the paper, although in all
of the samples, the particles could be found.

Fifth Day - 120 hours

Still no noticeable change; the sample with the most (at least, obvious) particles on its surface was the glossed 135 gsm in vinegar.

Sixth Day

Nothing has changed......

Day Seven

The paper samples still seem to be in one piece... However, the particles on the surface of the water could be found in greater numbers in all of the samples. The dishes with the most particles were the 135gsm ones, both glossy and matt.

So there. Now I just need to make this into a discussion. :S

different types?

well, now i know how paper is made, there is another question:

What some different types of paper?

well, maybe a better question would be what are the different properties of paper?

anyhoo, i will [attempt to] answer both questions.

while researching, i stumbled upon this very helpful site that just happens to answer my question.... im not exactly the model student, so im just going to copy and paste some of what it says...

Properties of Paper

Basis Weight (GSM)
Brightness, Whiteness and Colour
Bulk
Dimensional Stability
Folding Endurance (Double Folds)
Formation
Gloss
Machine and Cross Direction
Moisture
Opacity
Porosity
Sizing / Cobb
Smoothness
Stiffness
Stretch (Elongation)
Tearing Resistance
Temperature and Humidity: Conditioning of Paper
Thickness
Wax Pick No. (Surface Strength)
Wire side and Felt side

Those are the different properties of paper, but i'll expand on the ones that will most likely affect the results of my experiment.

• Basis Weight - is the weight per unit area of paper. It is usually expressed as grams per square metre (GSM or g/M2), pounds per 1000 sq. ft, or kilograms per ream (500 pages). The basis weight of paper is important, as it affects all of the other properties of the paper.

[to be continued.... ]

more research...

well, now we now what paper is made of, we have another question...

What exactly is cellulose?

well, i was researching this, and i found a very good answer to this question... except i cant rephrase it any better....

"The softer parts of the bodies of plants are made up mostly of cellulose. It is the cellulose which enables a plant to bend and have flexibility. Nearly all green plants manufacture cellulose for their own use. It is made up of the same chemical elements as is sugar, namely, carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. These materials are found in air and water. The sugar which is formed in the leaves is dissolved in the sap of the plant and soaks all through the body of the plant. Most of it goes to those places in the plant where growth or repair is taking place and part of this sugar is changed into cellulose. The plant uses it to make the walls of new cells. Cellulose is one of those natural products that man cannot produce chemically in the laboratory. But, of course, he uses it in many ways. He can obtain cellulose from plants even after the plant is dead and all the moisture in the plant has evaporated."

Source: http://www.badhonhara.com/Article_Body.php?Article_ID=90&Sub_Sub_Category_ID=2

(that was taken straight out of the site, btw.)

so thats cellulose.

Now, i'm sure im not the only person who has tested to see how paper deteriorates... so i searched for any other published experiments that might be related to mine and found something about the deterioration of different types of paper.

http://www.loc.gov/preserv/deterioratebrochure.html

ok, this article is a little long... so i'll summarise it.

• Cellulose fibres deteriorate when exposed to acids and moisture. The acid and moisture causes the fibres to split into smaller fragments continuously. The breaking down of the fibres then produces more acids, and the process continues.
• The longer the cellulose strands, the more durable the paper. Therefore, the shorter the fibres, the easier it is to damage the paper.
• Paper with the shortest cellulose fibres are newspapers that are mechanically processed without chemicals.
• Paper with cotton in it is sure to last a lot longer than regular paper, as the cellulose fibres in cotton are much longer than those most likely to be found in the normal paper.
• Alkaline paper, however, will last as long as cotton paper, which is a very long time. The alkaline in the paper neutralises acids and also makes the paper look whiter.
• Recently, scienctists discovered that as cellulose fibres age, they release acids such as formic, acetic and lactic acid. This would in turn, speed up the process of paper deterioration.

with this in mind, i think the vinegar should deteriorate the paper the fastest, and in all liquids, the newspaper should be the first to disintegrate. :)

later.

woo! research!

ok.... its about time i got off my fat backside and finally started researching about my experiment... –.–

so.... one of the first questions that needed answering was:

How is paper made?

well.... i seriously didnt know how paper was actually MADE. i mean, i just knew it was something like trees ––> some funky machines ––> paper. so what can i say?

so i did some research.

Paper is used by processing the cellulose fibres that are found in most trees. No specific tree must be used to make paper; hardwood, softwood, bamboo, cotton, sugar cane waste, and many other different materials are used to create paper.

There are two ways of processing the wood to retrieve the cellulose fibres: mechanically, and chemically. Mechanical processing is about twice as efficient as chemical processing in terms of energy and waste, but chemicals do a better job at separating the fibres from the lignin (the stuff thats not wanted) and other organic compounds. In order to separate the materials, the wood must first be made into pulp.

If mechanically done, the material is finely chopped or ground up, and sometimes steam or some chemicals are used to help. The pulp that is made via this method, however, is not very good quality, and usually this pulp is used to make newspapers, packaging, or anything that doesnt need high quality paper. Because this pulp is rather low quality, medium-grade pulp is sometimes mixed in, so the resulting paper is not so bad quality.

Chemical pulping, also known as the "kraft" process, involves chemicals, heat and pressure to get rid of the lignin. This results in 90-95% of the lignin and unwanted materials being removed, and leaves better quality pulp.

Sooooooo.... after this, the paper might be bleached, to make whiter paper. THEN, lots of water is added to the pulp, and this mixture is sprayed onto a moving mesh screen in a few layers. The mesh is usually HUGE, so there is a lot of paper. The mat then goes through a couple of rollers to squeeze out the water and compress the paper. Infrared dryers might also be used to speed up the drying process.

Now, there is an absolutely MASSIVE roll of paper, so all there is to do is to cut it up, and send it of to the packaging factories to package it and send it out to the shops.

*** i just realised that i didnt need to go into such detail..... O_O ***

For recycled paper, the fibres in the paper are recycled, although with each re-processing, the quality of the paper gets lower, so the fibres in the paper can only be recycled about 3-6 times before it gets absolutely horrible.

Source: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2231/how-is-paper-made

FUN FACTS!! :D

...got your attention, didnt i?

• 1 ton of uncoated virgin (non-recycled) printing and office paper uses 24 trees
• 1 ton of 100% virgin (non-recycled) newsprint uses 12 trees
• A pallet of copier paper contains 40 cartons and weighs 1 ton. Therefore:
• 1 carton (10 reams) of 100% virgin copier paper uses 0.6 trees
• 1 tree makes 16.67 reams of copy paper or 8,333.3 sheets
• 1 ream (500 sheets) uses 6% of a tree (and those add up quickly!)
• 1 ton of coated, higher-end virgin magazine paper (used for magazines like National Geographic and many others) uses a little more than 15 trees (15.36)
• 1 ton of coated, lower-end virgin magazine paper (used for newsmagazines and most catalogs) uses nearly 8 trees (7.68)

Source: http://www.conservatree.com/learn/EnviroIssues/TreeStats.shtml

That should've been interesting. Maybe.

OK, thats enough. but i'll be back! i promise. :D

climatic graphs are _________.

well..... this literally took me about... 4 hours to edit. D:< -sigh-

hmm..... not exactly the best, but at least i know how to upload photos! :D

second the best!

ok, after reading that email ms zhang sent us (if you haven't read it already, read it!) i've thought of another idea. by myself.

aim: to find what type of paper deteriorates the fastest, and in what liquid.

method:

• put different samples of paper into glasses, and into different liquids.
• take photos everyday, or every few days, depending on rate of decomposition.

independant variable: putting normal paper in water?

dependant variables: everything else.

some liquids to use:

- water

- vinegar

- oil?

- detergent water

- bi carb/water solution? (not sure)

- salt water

- sugar/water solution

different types of paper:

- normal paper (from school or something)

- higher quality paper.....

- photo paper

- hi gloss paper

- cardboard.

now that i think of it, i think thats a preeeety good idea, but i might have too many variables... i'll need to refine this eventually.

but in the meantime, please leave your interesting or creative responses in the comment section belooooow. :D