Polymers, or “Super Baby Diaper Battle”

Today was polymer day at LaPaz Home learning. Started off by exploring this excellent website(Kids Macrogalleria) which has great info, games and activities all about polymers.

Superboy was able to spend about an hour or so on the site and came away with a pretty good understanding of what both natural and synthetic polymers are all about.

I also made up a Polymer Scavenger Hunt for Superboy. He searched high and low to find about a dozen or more different polymers (using helpful info from this site) and recorded them in his science journal.

Then of course there was an experiment to do!

Since a super-absorbent polymer (polyacrylamide) is the reason for the holding power of modern diapers, we decided to test a few diapers to see which one held the most liquid. Superboy tested three different brands of diapers, head-to-head (or, bottom-to-bottom) and called it the Super Baby Diaper Battle!

Here are the contenders:

(left to right: Rite-Aid Ultra-fit, Huggies Overnights, and White Cloud Supreme, all of them in a size 5).

First, Superboy made his predictions. He thought the Huggies would hold the most, and that they would hold about a cup of liquid.

Then he did a trial run to see approximately how much water to use in the actual test. He took another of the cheapest diaper (the Rite Aid) and slowly added water (colored yellow for “authenticity”) with a dropper and recorded how much the diaper held.

It ended up being nearly 4 cups!

Now he had his plan: He would put six cups of water into a pot, completely immerse a diaper (turned inside out), for one minute, and then bring it out. Then he would measure the amount of water left in the pot.

It worked like a charm! The results:

First place: Huggies Overnights were the clear winner, holding 4 and 3/8 cups of water.

Second place: White Cloud Supreme, holding 4 cups.

Third place: Rite Aid Ultrafit, holding 3 and 1/4 cups of liquid.

So ended the Super Baby diaper battle, and our study of polymers.

And that, my friends, settles it as far as which diaper we will be using for JackJack, at least at night! Only the best for our babies bottoms!