Soap & Water or the next best thing

We hear it a lot now. It's not like we didn't have to wash our hands before but now we really have to wash them all the time and really, really well. Sing Happy Birthday for 20 seconds. We can sing another song too, like Diggy Diggy Hole by Wind Rose (Minecraft inside joke.)

But what if you can't?

Like you're not home? You're out on your bike? Or delivering food and helping others? Or if you are at a protest for equality? What if you are just not near a sink with soap and water?

S A N I T I Z E R

Safety is S U P E R important, on the road, when you are helping others and really, really important in a crowd!

I wanted to do something for the community and give back because my dad is an essential worker and I know what it is like to hope he is ok. It was very scary in the beginning. He'd go to work a 3AM and come home at 2PM.

My mom set up a station by the back door. When he got home he'd come in the house through the back yard, take his temperature, go to the laundry room and leave his clothes in the washer, then go shower before any hugs or hellos.

I wanted to thank people like my dad providing food and supplies to all of us. I wanted to thank food delivery people, our garbage men, our Mail Lady, bus drivers, park workers and restaurant workers who cooked.

Theses people are not working in hospitals but still on front lines doing the everyday service jobs that we need to survive through this terrible virus and quarantine.

That is why I made this -

"One Boy, One Bike REAL and chemically accurate Hand Sanitizer".

I packed them small enough to carry in a pocket or backpack and I put a note on each to say THANK YOU"

I learned A LOT OF SCIENCE and thank goodness I am good with math to do the ratios for my mom.

My sanitizer smells like oranges from organic orange oil.

It has 65% Ethyl Alcohol. To kill all germs it needs 60% or more.

How do I know how much alcohol it contains? I tested it with a HYDROMETER! it looks like a big thermometer with numbers on both sides to measure the density of a liquid. There are different kinds on hydrometers. This one is used for SPIRITS to test ABV (Alcohol By Volume) of a liquid and it is right within 1%.

We had a lot of trial and error until we got the ratio of active (alcohol) to inert (other not active) ingredients right. This is very important because it has to be strong to kill germs and not too strong to hurt skin.

Everything had to be as clean as possible and my mom used a boiling water and bleach solution. We wore gloves. If we touched something not perfectly clean we had to get new gloves. I used a lot of gloves.

I learned A LOT of new words like "specific gravity", and how to test for proof and ABV. It is an easy multiplication or division problem. Our hydrometer does both but I looked at one side and did the math anyway.

Here are the ingredients:

Active -

Ethyl Alcohol 80%

Isopropyl Alcohol 70%

Inert (not active) -

Aloe Vera

Hydrogen Peroxide

Organic Glycerine

Organic Orange Oil.

I added pictures because they look cool and we worked hard. I think they are a good way to give back to our community and keep people safe.