1. Which liquid cleans pennies the best?
5th Grade Science Fair Project

2. Problem
Which of the five liquids used will make these pennies the cleanest and shiniest?

3. Purpose
To determine which liquid will make the pennies the cleanest.

4. Hypothesis
The penny cleaned with cola will be the cleanest.

5. Research Before 1982, pennies were made of pure copper.
After 1982, pennies are made of zinc core with a thin copper plating.
Pure copper pennies look dirty because the copper mixes with the oxygen in the air and makes copper oxide.
All 5 pennies I am using are from before 1982.

6. Materials ½ cup measuring cup 5 clear plastic cups & 5 pennies
½ cup of each liquid: coffee, cola, grapefruit juice, banana pepper juice & pickle juice
bowl of clean tap water
Pen, marker, paper & camera

7. Procedure/Experiment
Pour ½ cup of each liquid into clear cups
Take picture of pennies before dropping into liquids
Drop one penny into each cup of liquid
Wait 15 minutes
Take each penny out and rinse in bowl of clean tap water
Take picture of clean pennies after rinsing
Take notes of which is the cleanest, next to cleanest and etc…

8. Procedure/Experiment

9. Results

10. kosher dill pickle juice
Results
Best to worst:
banana pepper juice
kosher dill pickle juice
grapefruit juice
cola
coffee

11. Conclusion
My hypothesis that the cola would clean the penny the best was incorrect. In fact, the cola was in 4th place as a cleaner. My project clearly shows the banana pepper juice was the best cleaner. The pickle juice in 2nd place did a better job than the 3rd place grapefruit juice. And last, I saw no change on the penny that was in the 5th place coffee.