Always dry your hands......

What is the best type of paper for drying your hands?
Of course, everyone knows how important it is to dry your hands thoroughly after washing them. But today we got thinking; were we using the best type of paper for the job?

We thought that to do the job well, paper towels would need to soak up water but be strong enough not to disintegrate.

This is what we decided to do:
We chose four different kinds of paper: toilet paper, writing paper and the two different paper towels we have in our school.

First we dipped two fingers into a beaker of water.



We let the water drain off onto one piece of paper. We counted up to ten.



We did the same for the other three pieces of paper.
We observed carefully to see which paper soaked up the most water.


Even though it was quite absorbent we noticed that some of the toilet paper had holes in it.
The writing paper had hardly absorbed any water at all; there was a puddle of water on the surface.
The two paper towels had absorbed about the same amount of water.

We also did the 'rip' test (ask someone in Class 2i to explain how!) to see which paper was the strongest; we found that the toilet paper ripped really easily, the writing paper was very difficult to rip and the two paper towels were about the same.

So it seems as though the paper towels at school really are the best thing for the job of drying our hands; they absorb water well and they are strong enough not to disintegrate too easily.