A Sticky Situation Ted Alley David Thompson Secondary Floor Location : J 135 P

In my experiment, I tested aluminum, zinc, plexi-glass, plywood, and corrugated cardboard to see which adhered best to Duct Tape.

I made a testing rig to accept little plates of different materials, and connected the Duct Tape to the bottom of those plates. I stuck a hook above the Duct Tape, so if you pulled down on the hook, the Duct Tape would peel off the material. Instead of pulling down with my hands and introducing a huge factor of human error into the test, I used a weight that would load itself at a constant rate. WATER! I siphoned water into a bucket attached to the hook. This method was simple and accurate because 1 litre of water equals 1 kilogram. I tested the flow rate of the siphon, and then calculated the weight in the bucket by keeping track of the time before the bucket fell after starting the siphon. To keep the area of contact between the tape and material even from one test to another, I stuck paper to the tape in the places where there may be differences in the bonding area. I decided these areas were at the ends of the piece of tape, and where the hook went between the material and piece of tape. Once the tape was stuck onto the material, and the test was ready to begin, the siphon was started from a bucket on a surface above the other bucket, and the stopwatch was started. When the weight got too great in the bucket for the tape to hold on, the bucket dropped, and the timer was stopped.

The results showed that aluminum bonded with Duct Tape best. I thought this occurred because the aluminum is flat at a normal magnification, and has lots of pores at a microscopic level. The pores give a space for the adhesive on the Duct Tape to grab onto. Next came zinc. It has little plates at different levels, which means some surfaces had no contact with the tape. The plexi-glass came third. I thought this came next because it too, is smooth to the naked eye. At the microscopic level, the plexi-glass was little spheres fused together. This means that the adhesive could only reach half way around a sphere, which does not give as much grip. Testing the cardboard and plywood was not accurate, because I realized the materials did not hold together while the Duct Tape was peeling off, which meant I was testing the material?s strength, not adhesion with Duct Tape.