When my hair gets frizzy, a good silicone serum is like magic.

But then you have to wash your hands afterward, which sometimes feels impossible.

Silicone just does not wash out like other hair products.

So the anti-frizz serum sits on a shelf in my bathroom, mostly unused.

A few days ago, my four-year-old found it.

Whats that in your hair?

The front of his head was all wet, shiny curls.

Our hand soap is in a green container with a pump top.

The anti-frizz serum is also in a green container with a pump top.

I asked my Facebook friends what gets silicone out of hair.

Surely someone would know.

I had my doubts, since silicone is not water soluble.

Clarifying shampoo was another popular recommendation, but is there really a difference between clarifying shampoo and regular shampoo?

Crowdsourcing would not solve my problem.

I needed to use science.

He spent decades developing and testing hair products, and was happy to talk silicones.

He didnt have good news about my list, though.

Most of those things are going to be a waste of time.

Before getting into the details, he pointed out that not all silicones are alike.

My serum,Garnier Fructis Sleek & Shine, hadcyclopentasiloxaneas its first ingredient.

That one actually evaporates into the air, he said.

The second ingredient wasdimethiconol, which is a little bit water soluble.

Since I wasnt dealing withdimethicone, the least soluble of the bunch, my chances were pretty good.

I remembered, then, why I had settled on the Garnier serum.

Itdoeswash off my hands with a little effort.

Id tried other serums in the past that were much worse; theres a good chance they contained dimethicone.

Vinegar is a solid nope.

Baking soda: also useless.

Olive oil, peanut butter, and other oily kitchen substances: not likely to help.

Natural oils dont mix well with silicones.

This one is on my list because its the main ingredient in silicone caulk removers.

Clarifying shampoo: This was my best bet, he said.

Dish soapwould work for the same reason: its a strong cleaner.

That must be the cyclopentasiloxane evaporating, like Schueller said it would.

I still wanted to test the different cleaners, though, so I devised an experiment.

The Experiment

I smeared samples of the anti-frizz serum onto swatches of undyed cotton fabric.

I tried vinegar, which beaded up on the silicone-coated fabric.

Since you canwaterproof fabrics by spraying silicone on them, this was no surprise.

Next came Pantene shampoo, a non-clarifying throw in that had dimethicone in its ingredients list.

I lathered, rinsed, and repeated, and the fabric felt fairly clean.

I also tried a clarifying shampoo, Mitch Heavy Hitter, which felt like it worked pretty well.

I prepared some more swatches and tried it both ways.

B, the vinegar.

G, the olive oil that had not been washed out.

H, the mineral spirits, not washed.

All of these so far didnt look very clean, he said.

C, Pantene shampoo.

D, clarifying shampoo.

E, mineral spirits, washed out with soap.

These last three were all pretty similar, my judge remarked.

Imagine thatthe chemicals did exactly what the chemist predicted.

In that case, it would make more sense to just use a clarifying shampoo in the first place.