Pregnancy test in stream or pot- why?

[Hurraahhnaptime]

I am interested in why some pregnancy tests say to urinate in a pot and others to urinate directly on them. Why is this? Are the tests actually any different?

You can miss it and flood the test which will be a waste of money!

But then why don't they all say use a pot? Hmmm you can tell I'm bored!

I don't know! I have never even read the instructions, just peed in a pot and waited for the lines to appear!
I didn't realise they actually specify to pee in a pot, just that it makes the most sense to me.

Ooo may be because you have to leave it for a few minutes and if you pee directly under a stream it won't be enough time?

I wondered this too! I put it down to there being more risk that the sample can become contaminated if you pee into something else first then test, rather than testing straight from the source. (I have nothing to substantiate this, it's just a thought).

The ones that you hold in stream have the actua test strip encased in plastic. The dip only Ones don't.

The urine has to wick up to work properly. It goes through a part of the test first where it picks up dye conjugated antibodies. If there's hcg in the urine then the antibodies bind to that. The control strip binds these dye conjugated antibodies anyway, but the test strip will only bind antibodies which have bound to both hcg and the dye.

So if you just pee on it it's not doing that first bit. The physical wicking up the strip is needed.

Like this:

You can pee on the plastic ones because only the start of the wick is exposed

I know this is an ancient post. Forgive me for being a twit. I didn't realise you had to dip these and did one the other day. I watched the pee/liquid track up the stick and the control line came up very strong and clear and no other line. Do I take this as it worked?