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"Being an African
American woman myself, knowing the challenges, knowing the
frustrations that woman have expressed about hair," said Reid,
an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue
University in Indiana.
"I was always wondering how we can think about this from a
mechanical engineering perspective," she added.
So Reid stepped out of the salon and into her laboratory. There
she teamed up with fellow researchers Amy Marconnet and Jaesik
Hahn to answer this question - what is the perfect amount of
heat to apply when straightening hair without causing permanent
damage? Reid said too much heat applied over a long period of
time could destroy the natural curve in hair leaving it
permanently damaged.
"We are wanting to see the point at which hair becomes
permanently straightened, it's otherwise called heat damage. And
if we understand the onset at which that happens than we might
be able to intervene before or give some suggestions before you
get to that point," said Reid.
"If you go to the mall right now you see an isle full of
straightening irons, and they have terms like ion technology and
twirling. Our question is what are these things actually doing?"
asked Amy Marconnet who is also an Assistant Professor of
Mechanical Engineering at Purdue.
The team used an infrared microscope, a heating iron attached to
a robotic arm, and other hi-tech instruments, to examine hair
the same way they would carbon nanotubes.
"So what we can see from the IR (Infrared) camera is the
temperature of the hair as a function of a position in time.
What we are actually measuring is how the temperature evolves in
the strand of hair as we move the straightening iron over it."
Their preliminary results showed that the science of hair is
challenging, mainly because everyone's hair is different. But
the team can conclusively say that African American hair seems
more susceptible to heat damage than Caucasian hair.
The research is ongoing. The ultimate goal is to gather enough
data to give people of different ethnic backgrounds a scientific
equation on how to straighten hair - without burning it.
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