Looking Back: What Happened? For this experiment I worked with Savreen, Evan, and Mayra and we made plastic milk. We weren't really sure what our end results were supposed to look like, but based on the research we've done I think that it ended up how it was supposed too. It was easy to mold, and it held its shape pretty well, but it was cracking quite a bit. The shape we molded it into was a heart, and I think overall it worked out pretty well. Looking Beyond: What's the Science? Making plastic milk was very easy, all you really need is hot milk and some vinegar and once you get all of the clumps out you can start molding. What's happening on a molecular level is inside milk there are protein molecules named casein. Casein is a monomer, meaning that it is a chemical that can bond to other casein molecules to form a polymer a molecule that consists of more than one molecule. Casein isn't a true plastic polymer, it is a casein plastic. The other ingredient is vinegar, and since vinegar has acid in it when you mix it with the milk, the casein does't like it, so when you're mixing the milk in vinegar together blob form. The blobs are the casein plastic, that you can mold into whatever shape you want. Fun Fact: Casein comes from the Latin word meaning "cheese" so when you're making this product you will see that it looks a lot like feta cheese almost. Looking Inward: Did you get desirable results? I think we did get desirable results because our plastic milk turned out exactly how we wanted it to, it was very easy mold, our heart looked really nice, besides the few cracks, I think the reason we got the results we wanted is because we all worked together to achieve our end goal. We didn't have a lot of time to complete this lab but we ended up finishing it almost perfectly. How I contributed was looking at the project and deciding that it would be cool to do. Savreen, Mayra and I knew that we wanted to do a lab, we just couldn't figure out what lab specifically so I suggested plastic milk and Evan later on joined us. I also helped with the proposal, and during the actual lab we all took turns stirring all of the products together. Looking Outward: Collaboration and Impact During this lab I worked with Savreen, Mayra, and Evan, I think we worked really well together, this was my first time working with Mayra and I will probably work with her again. I've only worked with Evan on a lab once, but we did the rocket motor project together and we along with Savreen got all of our work done when it needed to be. So I knew going into this lab I would work well with him, Savreen and I work together on every lab and once again it was good working with her. We performed good as a group, we followed the instructions nicely, we all contributed and helped each other, nothing really went wrong. I specifically contributed by recommending we do this lab, and I worked a lot on the proposal because I was excited to do this lab. Looking Forward: What Next? If I could do this lab again one thing I would change is having a strainer. Since we didn't have one we poured the milk and vinegar mixture into a paper towel, then I would squeeze it to get all of the liquid out. The globs were then in the paper towel, and we had to do that multiple times to finish off the milk and vinegar. I would work with Savreen, Mayra, and Evan again because I feel like we work really well together, doing this lab was really fun even though it was very simple. We stayed on task and got everything done on time which was great. Takeaway: Summary The first thing we did was go to the store to buy milk since we didn't have any, then we put one cup of milk into a mug and put that into the microwave. We heated the milk in 30 second intervals until it was hot but not boiling. Then we poured that into a bowl, poured 4 teaspoons of vinegar in, then mixed for about a minute. After that you could clearly see the separation of the globs and liquid, so we got the mug we fist used made a paper towel type funnel then poured the liquid in. We tried waiting for the liquid to drain by itself but it didn't, so I squeezed the paper towel so all of the liquid was gone. That process continued until all of the liquid was gone, and after that we got all of the globs from inside the paper towel, and molded that into a heart. *Pictures are on the way*
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December 2015
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