Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hello everyone! Hope you guys are doing alright. Im writing this seeking your help regarding the preparation of super absorbent polymer made from oranges. I am a student participating in a regional science fair conducted by the central board. I also hope that you guys would help me in making this happen. I have a few queries, some of them are:-
1)How long does it take for the total procedure to happen?
2)As one of you said, there are three types of orange products(Peel powder, jelly like substance and peel mixture), so which one is the best and what are the differences between them?
3)Which plant is the best for growth with this mixture and does it(orange mixture) create such a big difference in the plants?
4)I live in banglore(a city in one of the states of india) and the humidity here is high. So is there anyway i can replicate the drought atmosphere at home or is it okay for me to grow that plants normally?

Hi there,

It's great to hear that you've got a solid project idea to work with. It certainly sounds interesting & promising! To help answer your questions, I think it would help us if you could offer some more details about your planned experiments. What exactly you hope to do? How far you have planned? What have you read for your background research? Etc.

Regarding these, I like to direct people to our general Project Guide, which can walk you through some of the basics of building a science fair project from start to finish: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... ience-fair

I assume you are following a similar project to this student in the thread linked below, which in turn was inspired by Kiara Nirghin's 2016 Google Science Fair project:

Note: I'm not sure what happened to this thread, but the orange peels project discussion begins further below, on page 2 with the first post that contains blue text. If Expert User SciB could help out, due to their active role in this thread, I think that would be greatly appreciated. viewtopic.php?f=28&t=20453&start=15

But, to take a shot at answering your queries:
1) Best guess would be in the ballpark of a few months, minimum. Remember to budget plenty of extra time for some data analysis, drafting up the actual report/presentation you'll be submitting...and of course, potential failed experiments.
2) The aforementioned thread uses these three as separate experimental groups. Actually, only two are orange-derived...the student used potassium polyacrylate (what I believe you are calling "jelly like substance") as a control; it is an industry standard (meaning it is commonly used in real-life agriculture today). The two others are simply two different ways you can easily extract pectin from orange peels.
3) Well in theory, any plant should grow, so as long as you're using the same type of plant in each experiment I imagine it doesn't matter much. That being said, the student used beans because they grow quickly/easily.
4) Off the top of my head, without acquiring any specific equipment, maybe you could use an oven to dry the soil periodically? I'm not quite sure. This might require some innovative thinking.

Finally, as a general note, I would encourage you to consider adding your own personal "twist" on this project, rather than try to replicate it directly. Maybe you could even make your local humidity work for you -- how might SAPs be applied in an environment where there is too much moisture rather than too little?
Here is another thread of a different student that tried their own version of this project: viewtopic.php?f=28&t=22026

Hope that's a good starting point. Please keep us updated on your work.