Tying up the Loose Ends

Ok so, I think I've established that after my super fail experiment, I need to change my experiment a bit lot. I need:

• A better strainer. Like one with super thin holes
• More milk + vinegar. The last batch produced so little casein =.=''
• A noseplug
• A better method

Oh, but I don't really want to write up another method! I spent so much time on my last one~ Ah well, I'll make some tweaks here and there... ><;;

OMG KILL ME RIGHT NOW.

Ok, so I just came back from my experiment.

IT WAS AN ABSOLUTE DISASTER

The casein. Smelt. So. BAD. It was like a mixture between urine and vinegar. I felt like dying. Anyway, I'll just run through what happened.
I can't believe I was so happy at the beginning. I had no idea was I was in for.

I even took a picture of the milk heating. Even I call that sad now. ><''
I let it reach 50 degrees and them I poured it into the bowl, then I poured in 50mL of vinegar. (I wanted to start off from a middle number)
Then, the smell started getting to my nose. It was horrendous. Nevertheless, because I was an awesome scientist I continued on. I stirred the stuff for a minute (I'm really tempted to called the "stuff" something else starting with an s) and it came out so gross. It looked like vomit to be honest. I seriously thought that I would have much more casein than this minuscule amount.

You can see that there are only like, a few flecks in there. Then I saw that no more casein would form and put it into the strainer. The thing was, the bowl was kind of hot, and the smell was so nauseating that the bowl kind of slipped and a lot of the casein fell into the sink. I still persevered and I tried collecting the casein and put it onto paper towels. The sadder thing was that only the little flecks came out so I couldn't take them off the towels.

I did, however get the little clumps which you can see on the bottom left hand side in the above picture. So I squished those together and made it into a ball and not a "flat rectangular shape", because seriously, I knew by then this would not be a legitimate experiment. I put the casein on my hand and took this photo:

My hands smell really bad now.
LOL you can see the camera strap!


Anyway, after that there was a lot of cleaning up I had to do. I wiped the sink and benches, and washed my equipment. I also sprayed the kitchen with air freshener. Stuff the food.

This was such an epic fail. I might post later on how many mistakes/errors there were in here, but right now, I'm seriously way too tired. G'NIGHT!

Before I start my Experiment

So before I started I thought that I would take pictures of my awesome vinegar and milk.

HOME BRAND IS DA BOMB. not






I'm sorry to my other equipment, because they're not good enough to be photographed separately. Ah well, I'll photograph them later while I'm doing my experiment.
I have everything ready and I'm about to do it now so wish me luck~ (although you're probably reading this after I actually did my experiment)



If you look really closely, you can see a picture of me when I was little with my mum ;D

Aim, Hypothesis and Referencing?

Aim: To investigate the effects on milk when vinegar is added to it (this probably isn't going to be my real one but I should make up one now for this blog's sake)
Hypothesis: When more vinegar is added to milk, it produces greater quantities of casein.

I used these websites to create my own method of making casein:
http://www.sciencebob.com/experiments/plasticmilk.php
http://www.csiro.au/resources/plastic-milk-activity.html

Explaining the Method

Well this post is solely dedicated to explaining my experiment a.k.a dumbing it down. So it's just a way of me reminding myself why I did certain things and identifying controlled variables and stuff for my report. 

First I set up my equipment, so that the milk doesn't lose its heat while I prepare my other equipment, like measuring my vinegar. After the milk reaches approximately 50 degrees celcius (the temp. of the milk is an unavoidable error/inaccuracy which I have to write in my report) I pour the milk into the ceramic bowl and quickly add the vinegar to the bowl of milk. Again, I have to do it quickly so that the milk doesn't cool down, although if I do it too fast I might spill some or burn myself. Should that be in the risk assessment? Oh dear, I totally forgot we had to do one. Or do we? O-O
Anyway, then I use a spoon (do I have to say if its metal or wooden and if it effected the experiment or not? kill me.) to stir the milk and vinegar so that they'll mix and form the casein. I have to do it for one minute for every experiment because it's a controlled variable as stirring it more might effect the end result.
Then whatever is in the bowl should be put in the strainer over the sink, so that I can get the casein. I'll take the solids (I wonder if it'll be hot or not?) and try to mould it into a thin rectangular shape so that it dries faster in the sun.
Then I think I need to record what the time is, and I probably should have said that in my method, but write it down somewhere so that I know when I should take it out of the sun. I think another unavoidable error might be how much sun each of the plastics get because I can't watch over it 24/7.
Then I'd take the casein away and tabulate the information with what I think might be the dependent variables. I'm keeping my options open at the moment.
Finally I repeat the experiment with different amounts of vinegar, to see how the dependent variables change. Did I need a hypothesis and aim as well? I'll write that in my next post. 
I said that I had to repeat the experiment with no vinegar because it should be my control group one. I don't think that's the right term, but I learnt that you should do something like that just in case it does it my itself... pardon me if I don't make sense. And Ms Zhang I feel sorry for you for having to read all of this. ^^

Method

Okay, so I found out in class that we had to make a suitable method for our experiment and do it in dot points and in present or future tense. I choose present because that's what we usually do. ^^;;

Equipment

·        1x spoon

·        1x strainer

·        1x saucepan

·        1x thermometer

·        1x measuring cup

·        1x ceramic bowls

·        250mL of vinegar

·        500mL of full cream milk

Procedure

·        Place the strainer over the sink and the ceramic bowl on the bench.

·        Pour 25mL of vinegar into the measuring cup.

·        Heat the 100mL of milk in the saucepan to a temperature of 50°C.

·        Pour the heated milk into the ceramic bowl.

·        Add the vinegar to the milk in the bowl.

·        Stir the mixture with a spoon for one minute.

·        Pour the contents of the bowl into the strainer.

·        Gather the solids in the strainer and mould into thin rectangular shapes.

·        Place in the sun to dry for one day.

·        Tabulate information on the resultant substance including: weight, hardness, colour, flexibility and smell.

·        Repeat experiment replacing 25mL of vinegar with 0mL, 50mL, 75mL and 100mL of vinegar.

Climate Graph

So late... ah well, at least its up ^^

I'd just like to say... PAINT FTW.