Shamwow or Scam-Now

Group Members: Catherine Zhang, Irina Nehai and Sara Saad

Purpose: The purpose of our experiment was to find out whether or not the
shamwow drips.

Materials:
Amount Material
1 Beaker
1 Funnel
1 Graduated Cylinder
6 Shamwows (orange)
1 Aluminum pan

Procedure:
1. Fill the 150mL beaker with water.
2. Place the funnel into the graduated cylinder.
3. Pour 10 mL of water into the funnel from the beaker.
4. Remove the funnel from the graduated cylinder.
5. Pour the water from the graduated cylinder out onto the shamwow so that
the water is distributed around the shamwow and not just on one spot.
6. Pick up the shamwow vertically and hold it up by placing your fingers on
the upper two corners of the shamwow.
7. Have your partner measure the time you hold up the shamwow to be in the
ratio of 1 mL per second. (10mL = 10 seconds)
8. Repeats steps 2-8 until the shamwow drips. Each time you add 10mL of
water more.
9. Record the time at which the shamwow drips and how much mL of water
was added to the shamwow to make it drip.
10. Repeats steps 1-10 for the remaining 2 towels. And do the next 3 towels
the next day.
 Shamwow or Scam-Now
Group Members: Catherine Zhang, Irina Nehai and Sara Saad

Results:

Day 1 Day 2
Towel # mL of Dripped Towel # mL of Dripped
water after __ water after __
added minutes added minutes
1 180 1:50 4 190 0:50
2 200 0:30 5 180 0:30
3 180 0:10 6 180 2:00
Average Day 187 1:03 Average Day 183 1:30
1 2
Total Average 185 mL 1:20 seconds

Discussion:
The claim mentioned in the shamwow commercial is not true because on
average, a shamwow begins to drip after 1 minute and 20 seconds when 185 mL
of water is added to it. The claim says a shamwow will never drip.

Some discrepancies are: the shamwow didn’t absorb all the water and
some water was left on the pan, and also, the shamwow has been used before by
other students and it might not have been as effective as it was before.