Product Quality Control – Performance Task

Problem: Most if not all products in the market right now specify the mass or the amount of material there is in the product. Take soda for example. Say a soda can has “600 ML”
printed on it, naturally, one would assume that there would be 600 ml of soda in it. However, is this really accurate? The problem of this experiment is to see if these labels are accurate to make sure people know that they are getting what they are paying for.
Formally: Are the actual masses of the laundry soaps accurate when compared to the masses put on the label or packaging?

Hypothesis: My hypothesis will be that the labels put on the packaging of the soaps are inaccurate. I think they use an estimated amount to save time ,but sacrifice the accuracy of their measurements in exchange. I can hypothesize this due to the fact that what they label on their products is a solid number. Ex: 140g. This does not leave room for uncertainty and it was surely not measured well.
Formally: If the mass of the laundry soap bar does not match the label on the soap packaging, then the label on the soap packaging is in accurate

Materials:
3 Surf Brand Laundry Soap Bar (145g)
3 Tide Brand Laundry Soap Bar (140g)
1 Digital Scale

Procedure:
1.Take note of the mass labelled on the packaging.
2.Remove the laundry soap bars from the packaging.
3.Zero the digital scale i.e: making sure it is at 0.00g.
4.Scale the Surf laundry soap bars thrice (once per soap bar.)
5. Scale the Tide laundry soap bars thrice (once per soap bar)

6.Record and analyze results.

These results were taken after measuring the soaps using a digital scale. Due to the fact that the smallest increment that the digital scale can measure is 0.01g, 0.01g was used as the uncertainty because I used a digital balance.

 

Analysis
From the results shown, you can see that not only are the prints on the packaging inaccurate, they are also higher than they should be. From the results gathered, there is on average, based on the results  6g more mass of an actual surf laundry bar from what the package says is the mass, and Tide is on average, based on the results 9g higher than what the package says is the mass. Showing the inaccuracy of the label on the packaging.

Conclusion:
From these results, I can conclude that the printed mass on the packaging of products are inaccurate and only shows an estimate of the actual mass of the products. This can show that they do not individually weigh each and every product, which is understandable but could be dangerous to them due to the fact that they are actually giving more than what they advertise.

Recommendation:
Due to the fact that I only tested this experiment on two products of the same kind , and finding both to be inaccurate does not prove that all products are not accurate about the labels they print on their packaging. So I would recommend using different kinds of products as well as having a larger amount of products for a wider range of information gathered due to the variety in products as well as the fact that you can see how inaccurate or accurate the results will be compared to one another, allowing for a more informative experiment. More trials could also be done for a more accurate result.