Real-Life Math
You might not think a textile color chemist would use math very
much. What does 2 + 2 have to do with creating colors, anyway?
"I use
mathematics all day long," says Liz Hodgkinson. She is a dye house manager.
"Calculus and trig, no. Algebra, yes. Ratios and percentages, YES!"
Textile
color chemists have to make sure the colors turn out "on shade" every time.
One of the ways they do this is by attempting to duplicate the conditions
under which the color turned out on shade before. They replicate the exact
dye recipe, the water temperature and quantity of product.
Dye recipes
are usually created with a combination of three colors: yellow, blue and red.
"Formulations
are normally based on a percentage of goods," says Hodgkinson. "You need to
know the weight of the batch."
You have a large batch of wool sweaters
you want to dye a dark burgundy color. You know that the recipe you used last
time to create dark burgundy is 0.28 percent yellow, 2.7 percent red and 0.3731
percent blue. You also know that the sweaters you want to dye weigh 562.4
pounds in total.
To figure how much dye you will use to achieve the
desired color, you will use the following formula.
Total amount of
dye color = (percentage of single color from dye recipe) x (weight of batch)
However,
dye recipes require the measurements in grams per liter. You
have to convert your figures into that format.
To convert pounds to
kilograms, you must divide the weight for each percentage by 2.2. There are
1,000 grams in a kilogram.