Different Ratios in Sunscreen

On Wednesday, 10 different sunscreens were made for future testing.  Five had zinc oxide (ZnO) and the other five did not.  Each group of five had consistently increasing amounts of curcumin.  Increasing the amount of curcumin in the sunscreens meant also increasing the amount of alcohol in the sunscreen because the curcumin is kept in an ethanol solution as it is not water soluble.  Increasing the amount of alcohol in the sunscreen meant that the more curcumin solution that was added, the more runny the resulting sunscreen would become.  The results of the sunscreens initially did not show an exact pattern of increasing or decreasing viscosity, however once the sunscreens were left overnight, they all became more evenly viscous. 

-Alexandra Griffith
5/30/19