Does this sound like a good science project? Test products for impurities. For example, you could compare the amount of

Question: Does this sound like a good science project? Test products for impurities. For example, you could compare the amount of lead in different brands of bottled water. If a label says a product does not contain a heavy metal, is the label accurate? Do you see any evidence of leaching of hazardous chemicals from plastic into water over time?
- Keywords:
  bottle,
  chemical,
  hazard,
  heavy,
  impurity,
  label,
  leach,
  metal,
  plastic,
  product,
  project,
  pure,
  water
Asked by skizza09 to Suzie, Sheila, Rob, Geoff, Adam on 21 Mar 2011 in Categories: General.
- Geoff McBride answered on 18 Mar 2011:
  
  I like this you could make the label Smart and flash or bleep or even send a message when the food is off or contaminated.
- Adam Tuff answered on 18 Mar 2011:
  
  That would definitely be an interesting eperiment – especially finding out how containers affect the food stuffs inside them! But do you think there would be sufficient amount of things leaching into these things that they would be detectable? How would you detect them?
- Suzie Sheehy answered on 18 Mar 2011:
  
  I think your idea of whether you see any evidence of chemicals in the water from the plastic over time sounds like a great idea. If I win, make sure you email the address on my profile with your idea & info! Maybe chat to your teacher to see if you can think of how you’d do the experiment??
- Sheila Kanani answered on 20 Mar 2011:
  
  This does…you should tell it to Suzie as part of her competition!
- Robert Simpson answered on 21 Mar 2011:
  
  This is a great idea for a project – though I’m not sure you’ll have much finding much in bottled water specifically. My A-Level Chemistry project was to find out what coins are made of, which included testing for impurities.
  
  If you want to test food and drink for label-accuracy, how about finding out how much fat is in ready meals? One I also wanted to do was see if any of the name-brand moisturisers are actually very different from each other. I’m convinced they’re all just diprobase with perfume in the,.