The Complete Handbook of Cotton Balls

Chapter 1: Understanding Cotton Balls

The Material Reality of a Cotton Ball

Take a cotton ball and pull it apart. You are not looking at a solid, uniform object. You are looking at a tangled mass of individual fibers, each one a single elongated plant cell. Those cells, which range from about 2 to 6 centimeters in length depending on the cotton species and growing conditions, are the entire story. A cotton ball is not manufactured in the way a plastic pellet or a metal screw is. It is a collection of natural fibers that have been cleaned, carded, and consolidated into a loose, cohesive mass. The entire performance profile of the product — how fast it absorbs, how much liquid it holds, whether it leaves residue behind, how it feels against skin — is determined by the physical properties of those individual fibers and how they are arranged relative to one another.

The fiber itself is roughly 90 to 95 percent cellulose, a polysaccharide with a strong affinity for water. This is the fundamental fact that makes cotton balls useful at all. Cellulose molecules carry hydroxyl groups, which form hydrogen bonds with water molecules. When a cotton ball is brought into contact with a liquid, the liquid is drawn into the inter-fiber spaces by capillary action, and then held there by both the surface tension of the liquid and the hydrogen bonding between the water and the cellulose. The result is that a single standard cotton ball, weighing about