Edible Water Bottle Project

[deleted-708299]

Hello all,
Do you think that a project involving creating edible water bottles and studying their impact on the environment compared to other types of water bottles is a suitable level of difficulty for a grade 10 student?

In addition, what could I change in the making of the edible water bottles in order to have an independent and dependent variable, etc...?

Thanks for the help and all the best,
Jasper

[deleted-739703]

Hello,

Welcome to Science Buddies! I think this is a very suitable topic — it’s actually a very cool project in my opinion. I just watched a video about edible water bottles by ASAP Science. You should definitely check it out if you can!

If you would like to implement independent and dependent variables, I suggest that you first figure out how you would like to make these edible water bottles. Do you have a recipe? Multiple recipes?

If you are only making one type of edible water bottle, some independent variables to consider could include the measurement of a certain ingredient, the temperature of the water, the amount of water in each bottle, or even different liquids.

If you want to test multiple ways of making these bottles, the independent variable would be more complicated to test. You would just have different recipes, which isn’t quite an independent variable since there are several differences between recipes. Nonetheless, this would be a possible idea to test.

The dependent variable is also difficult to define since “effectiveness” isn’t measurable. A possible quality to test is how much water the bottle can hold without falling apart. You could also measure how long a given bottle can hold the water without falling apart. Otherwise, you might be able to judge different qualities (like taste, how much effort it takes to make, or how easy it is to use) based on personal opinion; of course, these cannot truly be measured and therefore are not as effective as scientific data.

Please let us know if you need any help!

Best of luck,
Emma

[EricBebenov24]

Hi there!

Adding on to what the other expert said, you can also try measuring the degradability of these edible water bottles since you want to study their impact on the environment compared to other types of water bottles. Try to place them in different environmental conditions; this can include temperature or placing them in sunlight/shade. Do any of these conditions influence degradability? Another interesting thing you can measure is water evaporation from this bottle, influenced by the conditions you place it in. Compared to traditional water bottles made out of polyethylene terephthalate (a type of plastic), these edible bottles will degrade much faster in the environment without imposing any harm. What makes the chemical compounds in edible water bottles less likely to stick around in the environment for hundreds of years compared to traditional water bottles? Consider this question if you're trying to investigate the chemical differences between edible vs traditional water bottles.

I agree that your independent variable can include the addition or removal of a certain ingredient that goes into making this bottle, which will then allow you to measure the strength of the bottle and the amount of time before this strength gives in. Another idea is testing different liquids/substances that can be contained in the bottle (juice, sauce, soft drinks, tea, or milk). Do any of these liquids/substances have significant differences from the others when they are stored in an edible water bottle? What could the reasons be for this observance? Consider these questions and just play around with different variables that can allow you to measure the effects on the same dependent variable (like bottle resilience over time). Time will not be your independent variable in this case!

I hope this offers some extra insight into your inquiries and that your project is completed successfully! If any clarification is needed to my response, please feel free to ask!

EricBebenov24

[deleted-708299]

Thanks for the replies everyone! This really helps!