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La Ceiba Bilingual School Science Fair Report 22/11/ 7-B Group Members: Lizzy Juarez Miguel Muñoz Elizabeth Cole

TABLE OF CONTENTS

RESULTS (DATA AND OBSERVATIONS)……...13-

• TOPIC……………………………………………………..
• ACKNOWLEGMENTS………………………………..
• INTRODUCTION……………………………………..…
• PROBLEM………………………………………………...
• HYPOTHESIS………………………………………….....
• REVIEW OF LITERATURE………………………….5-
• MATERIALS…………………………………………….8-
• VARIABLES…………………………………………......
• PROCEDURE…………………………………………11-
• CONCLUSION……………………………………………
• LIMITATIONS……………………………………….......
• APPLICATIONS…………………………………...……..
• REFRENCES…………………………………………..26-

Our purpose in this project was creating a new type of bio plastic in an inexpensive form, many bio plastics are made from very expensive materials which we kind of didn’t want too.

Purpose

In our experiment we decided to test 3 types of different ways to create biodegradable plastic, this included: plastic made out of grapefruit peel, plastic made out of tangerine peel and lastly, plastic made out of watermelon peel. We infer that our most stronger, flexible and inexpensive biodegradable plastic will be the plastic made out of tangerine peel. Reasoning: Todays traditional plastic is made out of chemical fillers, in other words, they use unnatural and synthetic polymers and also polylatic acid, the good thing is that scientist have discovered new fruits that include this kinds of substances, so in our research of tangerine we discovered that tangerine is one of the fruits that contains a very high quantity of polymers and polylatic acids, in conclusion to all of this, we think that tangerine will be

Hypothesis

the best bio plastic because it has a high concentration of polymers and polylatic acids.  Plastics are an important part of our life. The use of these materials occurs in almost all areas of our daily life, but are they really good to the environment as they are with us?  It is widely believed that plastics do not biodegrade, but this is in fact not the case. The concept of biodegradable plastics and polymers was first introduced in the 1980s. Bacteria that could break down plastic were developed as early as 1975, In that time biodegradable plastic was discovered. Now, how does Biodegradable plastic decompose? well, Biodegradable plastics decompose through the action of living organisms, usually

Review of

literature

acts as a plasticizer which “lubricates” the plastic. If you want the plastic more pliable, add more glycerin.  Vinegar: Lastly the vinegar, as I mentioned before, vinegar acts by breaking up some of the polymers chains that the cornstarch produces.  Now that I explained to you all the substances that our base ingridients have let’s proceed to our changing ingridients, for example, we will be first using grapefruit peel as our changing ingrident, also we will test tangerine peel and watermelon peeling for our changing ingridients, now let’s proceed to the materials.

 Tangerine:

1 cup of warm water 1 tablespoon of cornstarch 1 tablespoon of glycerin 1 teaspoon of white vinegar 4 tablespoon of water 1 whole peel of tangerine

 watermelon:

1 cup of warm water 1 tablespoon of cornstarch

Material

 Dependent: the time it takes to make the plastic solid.  Independent: Grapefruit peel. Tangerine peel. Watermelon peel.  Control: chemical plastic  Constant: Same amount of peel added. Same container. Same amount of ingridients Same amount of heat.

Variable

Procedure

 Step #1: The first step on our experiment process will be peeling all our fruits, then in a large cooking pan you will pure 1 cup of water and then add 1 whole of a fruit peel, start turning on the heater to level high and turn it off when the water begins to boil.  Step #2: Next what you want to do is strain all the excess off water left on the cooking pan so you would be able to start blending all of the fruit peels in a blender, stop when you are able to see that all the fruit peels became a little powdery.  Step #3: Next take out another large pan and start to combine all our base ingridients, this include: 1 TBS of cornstarch, 4 TBS of water, 1 TBS of glycerin and finally add 1 TEASPOON of vinegar plus 1 whole of the blended fruit peels from previous step.  Step #4: Feel free to mix well all this ingridients when they are still room temperature, once everything is thoroughly mixed you can turn on the heater on a low level, as soon as that you will noticed that your mixture will begin to turn white milky looking mixture, but it will then start to get a little thick, you could also observe that it will start to clump up, keep stirring until it turn

Trial #1 Grapefruit.  When we proceeded to step #1 we observed in the boiling part that our grapefruit peel was starting to get bigger and more vibrant.  The grapefruit peel was slimmer.  When we started to mix all of our base ingridients we observed that the texture was getting thicker and solid by the reaction of cornstarch, water and heat.  After putting our mixture on the wax paper we let it sit outside for some few days until it was completely dry. When this process occur we noticed that in day 1 the mixture began to have some little crates mostly in the middle part of the mixture.

Observations

 In day 3 of the process of drying up, the mixture remains normal just as day 1 but there was a little of difference because the mixture began to dry in its upper part and also some little crates were appearing as well. After checking it again it became very dry with a few crates.

Trail #3 Grapefruit  In trial #3 everything was the same again without any difference.  The only difference in trail #3 is when the mixture was drying and we didn’t saw to much crates as in the previous trials.  It also dry up in the 3 day.

Trial #1 Tangerine  In this trial we made all the same procedure, we observed some changes in the end result of the mixture because it was very stick and also holdable.  As the days passed by we noticed that the mixture dried super fast it just took 1 and half day to be solid.