For our project, we made gummies shaped like recycling symbols. We realized people don't know a lot about how trash gets sorted, especially the kids in the lower school. So, we tried to think up a way to reach the little kids. We thought about what would've gotten us interested when we were that young; food! But our food couldn't just be regular old food, we needed to make it relating to our trash sorting problem. We were going to make them shaped like recycling symbols using a molding putty we found on amazon. We quickly realized that we needed something to push in to the molding putty, so we made our own TinkerCAD design. At first we thought about making them out of chocolate, but chocolate was too expensive. We then did research about making hard candies, but for that we would need around 10 cups of corn syrup, so that was not going to happen. Then we came across a recipe gummy bears using jello, it was cheap and easy to make, it was perfect. The estimated cost for our project was around $45 which was a little under our money constraint. During the science fair if kids wanted a candy they would have to answer a question about trash sorting, for example, a question might be, "Where would you put this empty soda can: In the landfill, recycling, or compost?"
One challenge we had was with our TinkerCAD design; we needed to press it into the molding putty. We had tested our 3D printed design two times, finally working the second time, and then we realized we couldn’t print it because Ms. Mytko, Ms. Hill, and Mx. Mason were all at the San Mateo Maker Faire with the seventh graders. The big printer was also at the Maker Faire. So, we used a computer from the FAD to email Rose’s uncle to ask if he could print it for us since he has a 3D printer at his house. He printed our eleven hour print and delivered it to us in time for class on Monday!
We learned a lot in the process of making the gummies. For example,
to make candy you have to be really specific with your recipe and know exactly how much of each ingredient you need, because if you mess one thing up your whole batch could be ruined. You also have to give yourself realistic time checks, because most candies take a long time to set and you will need time to get your ingredients together and check your recipe. If we had had more time, I think we would’ve tried to make some of our candies out of chocolate and candies instead of just doing gummies out of Jello. Our advice to others attempting something similar to this would be to plan out the whole project ahead of time, find a doable recipe, and make sure you have enough time to finish your project.
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