How Much Weight Can A Plastic Bag Hold?

Aim:

To determine the amount of weight plastic bags taken from different sources will hold/withstand.

Hypothesis:

That the Big W plastic bag will hold the most weight.

Materials and Apparatus Needed To Conduct This Experiment:

• Weights (6kg, 4.25kg, 2kg, 1,kg, 50g)
• Canned food( for smaller weights)
• Plastic Bags X 4 from each source
• Calculator
• Pole
• Bench presser

Risks Assessment:

The risk in this experiment is very low, although some precautions should still be taken.

Inclosed shoes must be worn at all times as to protect feet from having a weight fall onto them, conduct the experiment in an environment away from breakable objects, cloths must be placed underneath the plastic bags as to protect the floor from weights which may fall onto it.

Method:

1. Put on covered in shoes.
2. Place cloths on the floor underneath the plastic bags.
3. Collect plastic bagsX4 from different shops/sources.
4. Collect different sized weights.
5. Set up bench press with bar.
6. Put plastic bag on the end of bar.
7. Add weights until it breaks.
8. Repeat this with the other three bags from that source for accuracy.
9. Repeat experiment with the other store plastic bags.
10. Record observations.
11. Graph data.

Results:

Inference:

It can be inverted from these results that plastic bags from supermarkets are stronger than plastic bags from other shops.

Discussion:

From the result, it can be seen that plastic bags can hold more than 15kg, nearly every bag (except for target) managed to hold 20kg or more, who proved my hypothesis to be incorrect.

The results of the test may have been affected by the way the weights were put in i.e: if little weights were placed in first or if larger weights were. This may have altered the results and the outcome may have varied.

The supermarket bags have been designed to hold more weight (i.e. groceries and milk) and the target bags has been designed to hold just clothes. This would also affect the outcome of the bags from target.

By conducting the following experiment we can roughly see how much weight a plastic bag can hold. For a more detailed result we would need to repeat the experiment several times on a larger scale.

Conclusion:

The investigation into the amount of weights a plastic bag can hold did not support the hypothesis by majority of the findings. The conclusion here is that the supermarket bags (i.e. franklins and Woolworth's) were able to support more weight than department store bags (i.e. Target and Big W). Generally plastic bags can hold a weight equal or greater than 15kg.