Furst, John-Nicholas

Ehlers, Raymond
Does Soap Affect the Surface Tension of Water?
Background: Surface tension refers to water's ability to "stick to itself". Surface tension
can be measured and observed by dropping water (drop by drop) onto a penny. The
number of water drops that can fit on a penny will surprise you.

Question: How does soap affect the water’s surface tension?

Hypothesis: I think that the surface tension of soapy water will be less than that of fresh
water because H20 has strong polar bonds, and when water is mixed with soap the polar
bonds which help to bind the water together are weakened, thus lessening the surface
tension.

Materials: pipette, liquid soap, water, beakers, penny, graduated cylinder, paper towels.

Procedure: 1. I received a beaker filled with tap water. 2. I took a pipette and filled it up
with water from the beaker. 3. I began to add drops of water to a penny, which was heads
up, every one second from a height of ½ centimeter and counting how many drops I had
put on it. 4. After I added the drop that caused the water to flow over, I recorded how
many drops stayed on the penny, and I then dried the penny with a paper towel. 5. I
repeated steps two through four, four times. 6. I took 100 ml of water and poured it into a
beaker. 7. I got 3 ml of soap. 8. I added the 3 ml of soap to the beaker and stirred the
solution 40-50 times with a fresh pipette. 9. I filled the pipette with the soapy water
solution and began to start adding drops of the solution to the same penny, from the
distance of ½ centimeter, at a rate of one drop per second. 10. After adding the drop that
caused the soapy water to flow over, I recorded how many drops stayed on the penny, and
I washed the penny under running water and dried it with a paper towel. 11. I repeated
steps nine and ten, four times.
Data:

Drops of Tap and Soapy Water Applied to a Penny

Trial 1 Trial 2 Trial 3 Trial 4 Trial 5 Average
Drops of Tap Water 35 27 10 15 39 25.2
Drops of Soapy Water 20 16 12 25 13 17.2

Compairison of Soapy Water vs. Tap Water

30

25

20
Average Number of Drops

15

10

0
Tap Water Soapy Water
Type of Water

Analysis: I averaged the results I got from my five trials for both tap water and soapy
water by using the average function in Microsoft Excel.

Conclusion: I have accepted my hypothesis because of the results of the data from this
lab. In my hypothesis I stated that the surface tension of water is higher than that of soapy
water. My data supports this hypothesis because the average drops of tap water the penny
could hold was 25.2 while the average drops of soapy water was 17.2 drops. This shows
that soapy water has a lower surface tension, thus making it not able to hold as many
drops of soapy water could on the penny. This relates back to the way soapy water and
tap water act in everyday situations. The soap causes the surface tension to be less than
that of water so if you poured soapy water onto a kitchen counter the solution would
disperse as broadly as it could over the entire counter. Tap water on the other hand when
spilled on a counter will naturally try to come together in water colonies. The molecules
in the tap water will move towards each other and stack on top of each other thus leaving
some parts of the counter dry and some parts with canals of water. I noticed in my data
that in trials 3 and 4 that the penny held more drops of soapy water than tap water. This
was not in accord with my hypothesis, and I think it may have been due to a weakness in
the experiment. When I used the pipette to suction water and then drop it onto the penny I
may not have been doing it exactly the same way each time. Human imprecision may
have impacted this experiment. For a further understanding of this topic I would suggest
redoing the experiment using different solutions, temperatures, surfaces, height of drops
and a precise mechanical devices to apply the drops.