COMMODITY-TESTING PROJECTS' HERBERT L. DAVISt Westminster College, New WiLninp-ton,Pennsylvania
suggestion that they test and compare a number of common commercial commodities, making recommendations as to the advisable purchases. The work was done by two sections of a cultural course in college chemistry, taken by students offering high-school chemistry. It is felt that such a background is highly desirable. Whiie such projects might enliven the major course, those students can more ROM time to time appear descriptions of various profitably concentrate on other items, as later they will activities in chemistry that serve to stimulate normally acquire much of the information that comes interest and an active participation on the part of from the projects. The work proved so popular on the students. Since there is no oversupply of such sugges- campus that a number of students taking a first course tions, it may not be amiss to include a brief report of a in chemistry have expressed the wish that they too project development recently successfully carried out. could have had projects. Whiie simpler work of the The stimulus to the development was the observation sort may be devised and is planned for the future, it of the greatly increased interest of the students when appears that only the best students of this group could the class discussion brought out any reference to the have done the present work without an excessive exinteresting and valuable work being done by Con- penditure of time. sumers' Research in testing and making comparative The purposes in devising the program were wholly reports on nearly all the materials the small consumer pedagogical. No great effort was made in this first use buys. Consequently students accepted gladly-the of the plan to make the test exhaustive, nor was any pressure exerted to achieve extreme accuracy and * Presented before the Division of Chemical Education of the quantitative results. For this reason the offered A. C. S. at Cleveland, Ohio, September 11, 1934. assistance of Consumers' Research was declined, t Present address: Lawrence College.
An effectiwe way to stimulate student interest and actizity is to set up codperative commodity-testing projects, com@ring competitive samples of familiar @rchases. A brief r&m of such work and its resultsjustifis a wider use of the method.
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although the author acknowledges with appreciation much guidance from Consumers' Research publications. The tests are believed to present a reliable picture of the local products studied, and agree in major respects with other reports of nationally available commodities. Professor Paul E. Spoerri of The Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn is engaged in workmg out more complete and accurate tests for such a program as this and should soon have available some interesting material. The primary purpose of the whole undertaking was to impress on these cultural students the immediate applications of chemistry to their everyday affairs. Probably no other activity has been so successful in achieving this end. A secondary purpose was, by means of the organization adopted, to aid the superior students in exercising their ability and initiative, and they were held up to good standards where necessary. In place of the more active work as project leaders, three quarters of the class wrote semester themes on processes, products, and personalities in chemistry. Another secondary purpose was to convey to the students some reliable knowledge concerning commercial products, their composition, preparation, adulteration, and real value. Early in the second semester the best students selected from a suggested list of possibilities these commodities: ammonia, vinegar, gasoline, toilet soap, laundry soap, baking powder, cosmetic creams, tooth paste, and special cathartics. Others suggested included tooth powders, water softeners, any number of cosmetic preparations, varions studies on textiles. Each project leader selected from one to four additional students as members of his group who were to aid in collecting information and making tests. Primary responsibility fell upon the leaders, and after about six weeks they submitted detailed outlines showing that they understood their commodities and the proposed tests. After two weeks of preparation, two weeks of the laboratory time were allotted to the tests. Considerable extra time was given to this work, but no student was heard to complain, there being evident an unwonted and very enjoyable spontaneity about the whole affair. The results were, of course, not uniformly good, but varied with the difficulty of the problem, accessibility of the literature and apparatus, and very largely with the student's ability and interest. Of the projects chosen, that dealing with household ammonia is probably the easiest to bring to a definite conclusion. The others involve, in addition to the objective tests which can be made, certain other subjective factors such as the flavor of toothpaste or vinegar, etc., in which definite evaluation is difficult. There is little argument about the finding that the poorest ammonia was five times as dilute and ten times as expensive as the best. But the finding that the poorest vinegar was about three times as expensive as the best buy (in terms of acetic acid) might be balanced against a preference for the flavor of the dilute vinecar. In this case the worst vinegar was a bottled, caramel-flavored concoction,
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while the ,inegar recommended as the best buy is a decent apple-cider barrel product. Of the seven toilet soaps tested, a luxury soap a t 35 cents a cake and the cheapest soap tested were found to contain silicate. One contained free alkali but none contained sugar or carbonate. In this study we did not attempt to settle the disputed value of silicate, rosin, or carbonate in soap, but did regard them as unnecessary in toilet soap and possibly of limited virtue in laundry soaps. A study of water-softening such as was camed out by Lowman' would have been of interest a t this point. On the laundry soaps, additional tests were made for chloride and sulfate, and a determination of water showed the common soaps to range from 25% to 35% water and to furnish from 17 to 67 grams of anhydrous material for one cent. The baking powder project included determination of total carbon dioxide by excess acid, together with ion detections, and the report included an extensive survey of the whole field. Of the four gasolines, the distillation curves were nowhere separated by more than 20°F. and the various tests were passed successfully save in one case where the doctor test was positive for a gasoline with a distinctly unpleasant odor. In the above-named projects, necessity products were found to conform in general to reasonable standards, although selection among them is guided by the tests. In the rest of the projects one enters the realm of advertising fairy tales where objective tests can only warn of items to avoid. The eight complexion creams revealed no mercury, lead, bismuth, or zinc, and so were passed as acceptable; a more complete study might include the character and amount of the oil phase present. The project on laxatives and cathartics included an extensive search of medical literature for materials of this sort, and laboratory examination of a few of the commercial products, including the trick crystals. Clear was the impression that proper diet and adequate liquid intake constitute the safest and most effective way to deal with this problem and that one is justified in doubting the wisdom of daily use of a horse purge in the hopes of curing all known ills, to say nothing of the economy of paying ten to fifteen times its real value. The dentifrice studies were aided by information from the American Dental Association, whose hands may well be strengthened in upholding standards for admission to the class of "Accepted Dental Remedies." The similar work of the American Medical Association laboratory deserves wider publicity as a potent protector of the public against all sorts of poisons and worthless concoctions. It became clear that the sole function of a dentifrice is to make tooth-brushing taste better and that none can cure any of the real or imaginary ills so widely advertised nor can any make the user popular. The tests were undertaken in no extremely critical spirit and many products were found to be perfectly satisfactory. A few of the samples were donated from
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LOWMAN. . 1. &EM. EDWC..9. 1809 (Oct.. 1932).
stock by local merchants, several of whom have been quite interested in the reports on their merchandise, in some cases indicating a decision to modify future pulchases in accordance with the tests. It seems obvious that such a cooperative spirit may be superior in real results for the consumer to any such work which alienates merchants and manufacturers. The projects as a whole did stimulate most of the leaders and many members of their groups to an active interest in the work. Looking up procedures for tests and carrying them out is an excellent method of learning them. It seems probable that individual work.may be more valuable than group work. An excellent outline of individual preparation projects is given by Haub.= Also many students will be much interested in such projects as described by W a l t e r ~ ,who ~ had his HAUB, J. CHEM.EDUC.. 4, 1241 (Oct.. 1927). a
WALTERS, im.,7, 358 (Feb., 1930).
students undertake patent medicine preparations as well as a number of process projects. For the class as a whole and to an increasing circle of their relatives and friends this project work brought these common materials out of the haziness of "a cake of soap" or "a tube of toothpaste" down to some real information of these products as made up of chemical substances good, bad, and worthless, but all capable of detection and analysis and therefore of comparative evaluation. Honest industrial enterprise has nothing to fear from such studies, although some modifications of products may be accelerated. The quacks and charlatans will find it more difficult to sell their worthless and harmful concoctions if more chemistry teachers really let chemistry sell itself to their students. Test methods for such a program have been compiled and will be made available a t a nominal cost by Consumers' Research, Washington, New Jersey.
