Baby Diaper Performance

Yes the light goes off when you close the refrigerator door

the first thing i did was put a diaper in some casserole dish thing and start measuring out 1/4 cups of water. each 1/4 cup of warm water was evenly poured out over the surface of the diaper and allowed to soak in for a period of 15 seconds.

after six 1/4 cups (1.5 cups total) the surface of the diaper felt slightly damp, but did not leak.

wanting to push the envelope, i decided to keep adding 1/4 cups till we had a leak.

its wasn't until i had poured 10 of these 1/4 cups (2.5 cups total) onto the diaper that it became saturated and started to drip.

according to the folks at www.convert-me.com here's how the math cranks out... 1 cup = 8 oz = .5 lbs

therefore, this particular diaper had absorbed right at 1.25 pounds of water or roughly 12.5% of a 10 pound baby's total body weight before it began to leak. my 3 months of experience tells me that the baby will tend to make a lot of noise before you EVER approach these levels.

now while the diaper takes in all this fluid, one can't help but notice the dramatic increase in size of the absorption area. so armed with my 25 year old ginsu steak knife, i made 3 incisions in an " I " formation with surgeon like precision. as the cuts were made, it is important to note that the material inside was under a considerable amount of pressure and began to ooze out. this is where the "science" part kicks in.

i had assumed that diapers were just loaded up with fancy cotton balls or something. this assumption was completely shot down when my dissection discovered that there were millions of these little jelly ball things inside. they sort of reminded me of salmon eggs or something. apparently, these things absorb up all the water and keep everything else around them dry. SCIENCE!

the only price the diaper has to pay for all this comes in the form of swelling. this would explain why some of www.avavining.com's overnight diapers would come off. the velcro tabs could not withstand the pressure caused by expansion.

intrigued by where these salmon egg things came from i decided to take apart yet another diaper. this time however, i would do so before adding any water to the situation.

what i found was about what i would have expected prior to "step 2"... a bunch of cotton ball material stuff.

so, after checking the diaper brand to make sure that the one i had just made a mess with was the same as the one i cut open earlier, i gutted the dry diaper and crammed its contents into a pyrex bowl. the cotton stuff took up about half an oz of space.

now to make sure that we were comparing apples to apples i decided to pour in the same amount of water used on the first diaper (2.5 cups). within 30 seconds the cotton ball lookin stuff had morphed into the salmon egg looking stuff. it was really amazing to watch for the first 30 seconds, but then it started to freak me out a bit.

the salmon eggs were oozing out of control and were soon spilling out all over the kitchen countertop. a quick transfer into a larger receptacle (below right) was necessary to avoid any freakish accident.

hmmm, not what i had expected with all that rapid expansion and all. my guess would have been that the swelling would have nearly doubled the overall volume of the diaper innards, but according to my "research" its all pretty much a wash. the expansion equals the volume of water added.

conclusion: without any doubt diapers are a vast improvement over the ole cloth and safety pin thing that my mom used on me. their ability to absorb and keep occupants dry comes at a significant co$t, but is well worth it. that being said, we are all now dumber for knowing the results of my research.

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