Why does it turn into slime?

Shampoo might look like a simple liquid, but it is actually a mixture of several ingredients designed to make it thick, smooth and easy to spread.

When you add tiny pieces of toilet paper, they soak up some of the liquid and mix throughout the shampoo.

This makes the mixture thicker and changes the way it moves.

Add enough toilet paper and your runny shampoo starts behaving much more like slime!

Why do different shampoos give different results?

Not all shampoos are made the same way.

Some are thick and creamy. Others are much runnier. They also contain different ingredients in different amounts.

That means one shampoo might make a fantastic stretchy slime, while another might make something sticky, lumpy or hardly slime-like at all!

That's why comparing two shampoos is important.

Changing the shampoo can change the result.

What did the fridge do?

Cooling materials can sometimes change the way they behave.

In your investigation, you put one sample in the fridge while leaving the other at room temperature.

Everything else stayed the same.

That meant you could investigate one question:

Does changing the temperature change the slime?

Comparing the two samples gave you evidence to help answer it.

Think Like a Scientist

You didn't just make slime — you carried out an investigation.

You changed one thing at a time, made predictions, tested your slime and compared what happened.

Scientists do exactly the same thing when they investigate new materials.

Change one thing. Test it. Compare the results. Look for evidence.

Try next

• Compare the plant-fibre stretch to a slime made entirely from natural plant gel →  [Snail Slime]

• Explore a slime made by linking molecules together with a chemical activator → [The Polymer Factory]