Ever wonder why hair is so good at oil spills? It’s all in the physics. Each hair has thousands of microscopic scales that make oil stick (we call it adsorption). Think of each mat as a giant hair-sock for oil. In fact, Phillip McCrory’s original Pantyhose experiment left oil-free water after just minutes. Scaling up, he estimated that 25,000 lbs of hair could adsorb 170,000 gallons of crude – enough to mop up a major spill. In day-to-day cleanup, hair mats outperform plastics. A 1.1 lb hair mat