Turn Milk into Plastic
Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2017 12:51 am
Hi, my son who is in 4th grade is doing the science fair project of Turning Milk into Plastic. He throughly enjoyed doing the experiment, but we are confused with our results. His question for the project is 'What is the best recipe to turn milk into plastic - how much vinegar is needed to give you the most plastic'? He thought 8 teaspoon will give the best yield. When we weighed the yield immediately after project - 2 tsp and 8 tsp seemed to give kind of similar yield (around 40 grams) and 4 tsp gave marginally lesser (around 36 grams). But once it dried after 48 hours we weighed again - 2 tsp gave the most at 20 grams, 4 tsp close to 18 grams and 8 tsp 15 grams. This means we don't need 8 tsp to give us the best yield. Is the reason because all the casein in the milk is turning into plastic with the 2/4 teaspoon itself and that we the extra acid in 8 teaspoon is making the milk very acidic. Or that there is no more casein left in the milk for the 8 teaspoon of Vinegar to covert into plastic. We are still confused whether 2 tsp gave us the best yield or 4 tsp. the texture of the yield of 2 tsp is slightly more gooey and it seems like it has some milk in it (hence probably weighs more) whereas 4 tsp hardened better. We would like to know what you think is the conclusion...
Thanks,
Sarita
Thanks,
Sarita