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Casein Plastic Experiment
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Casein Plastic
Idea
Question
Casein plastic is a product that comes from milk reacting with vinegar. The curdles, when dried, turn into the hard plastic that is used commonly for buttons in clothes. For this experiment, I decided to find out what was the most efficient way of making casein plastic.
Question
question
My question for this experiment came from the recipe of the product. In order to make casein plastic, you need to add a certain amount of vinegar to a certain amount of milk, so I wanted to figure out how much vinegar would be the best amount. So I asked that very thing, what ratio of milk to vinegar makes the biggest and strongest batch of casein plastic?
Hypothesis
hypothesis
To conduct the experiment, I split the ratios of vinegar into 5 groups. Out of these 5 groups, the median was the amount recommended by the original casein plastic recipe. Knowing this, my hypothesis was the following:
- The casein that was made from the batch with the most vinegar will be the sturdiest out of them all after being dried for 2 weeks. This is because the more curds are formed from the vinegar, the casein will be sturdier because of its higher mass.
Procedure
& Materials
Procedure
&
Materials
The first step to carrying out this experiment is to put the milk on the stove until it reaches a simmer. After that, pour one cup of milk into each of the 5 containers with different amounts of vinegar. Stir the mixtures after pouring and wait for them to reach room temperature. Once they do, starts the draining process. With cheese cloth and a fine strainer, drain the curds from each container until they are as dry as possible. Once dry, pass the curds to a layer of paper towels were you pat the curds even dryer, and at the same time flattening them. Once flat and dry, cut them into 3 similar pieces and set on a drying rack. Repeat this process for each of the batches.
materials
05
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03
materials
- Measuring cups
- Cooking pot
- Mixing whisk
- White vinegar
- Milk
- Paper towels
- Drying rack
- Strainer
- Gauze
- Measuring spoons
- 5 heat resistant containers
- Stove-top oven and pan
- Cutting board
- knife
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01
Pictures
Experiment
& Results
Experiment
&
Results
For this experiment I did extensive research to fully understand its process. Casein is a protein found in milk. The first to find out how to make plastic out of casein and commercialize it were Adolph Spitteler and his associate W. Krische from Germany. While they were trying to create a waterproof coating, they found out that casein becomes hardened and insoluble when it is treated with a chemical known as formaldehyde.
When you dive into the chemistry of casein itself, you find a protein that is relatively hydrophobic. In milk, it is found as a suspension of particles called casein micelles. The isoelectric point of casein is 4.6. Due to the fact that milk’s pH is 6.6, casein has a negative charge in milk. The purified protein is actually water-insoluble, which is why, when fully dry, casein plastic will never mix back or fade with water. Working with these properties, humans for centuries have used casein for many different things.
Results
Pictures
Pictures
Conclusion
& Discussion
Conclusion
&
Discussion
At the end of the two week waiting period, I was finally able to get my results and come to a conclusion. Fortunately, my hypothesis was correct and the amount of vinegar did positively impact the quality of the casein plastic.
Conclusion
conclusion
Form the beginning of my experiment, my hypothesis was the following: the casein that was made from the batch with the most vinegar will be the sturdiest out of them all after being dried for 2 weeks. This is because the more curds are formed from the vinegar, the casein will be sturdier if it has more mass. After having my results, I have come to the conclusion that my hypothesis was correct, even though I actually thought it would be wrong and the sturdiest would be the median as the original recipe stated. In my earlier hypothesis, I also did not take into account the weight of each batch of plastic. Looking at the results, the amount of plastic formed increased as the amount of vinegar used did. In fact, while doing the experiment, I noticed just how many more curds the batches with most vinegar produced. I believe this is because when more particles of vinegar are added to the milk, there are more possibilities for the reaction to occur. To put it differently, according to collision theory, the particles need to collide for a reaction to occur, and since there were more vinegar particles for the milk particles to collide with, more curd was produced.
Discussion
discussion
Unfortunately, the experiment did not go as accurate as I had hoped. From the beginning, I thought of measuring the volume of each piece of plastic, but soon I realized there was no accurate way for me to measure this. One of the steps was to separate the curds from the milk water using cheese cloth and a strainer as best as I possibly could and then dry the curds. During this step a bit of the curds would always stay in the cheese cloth and it would be impossible to remove exactly all the curds from it. This caused the products of my experiment to not be fully complete, however, it did not affect the conclusion of the experiment, since it happened to every batch equally. Thankfully however, the experiment question did not require professional levels of accuracy which allowed me to get correct results.