The wearing of face masks to help fight the spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a topic of much discussion. No one likes wearing these stupid masks. But hopefully everyone wants to help prevent spreading the covid virus. So do masks actually help with this?

This is a DIY science experiment, designed for folks to try out at home and does not replace guidance from your local health authorities!

A recent paper was published that outlines a simple method for testing mask efficacy, titled "Low-cost measurement of face mask efficacy for filtering expelled droplets during speech". In this guide we will show how you could recreate the test setup from that paper and run the experiment for yourself, along with results from our own recreation.

We think this would make for a great experiment to run in an educational setting. It has all the elements of the scientific method and can be carried out with reasonably cheap and accessible hardware and software.

This guide was first published on Oct 14, 2020. It was last updated on Mar 18, 2024.

This page (Overview) was last updated on Mar 08, 2024.

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