Homemade Organic Dog Treats - Sophia A. and Elliot C.

          At first, we didn't know what to make for our Maker Project. We originally wanted to make a candy machine, but we found out we couldn't do that because it didn’t help the earth in any way. Then we decided to move on to a dog feeder because we know how lazy people are when it comes to feeding their dogs, but we found out that we couldn’t do that either. We finally made up our minds and decided to make healthy organic dog treats. We wanted to make sure that dogs had the healthiest option for their treats. Some dog treats are bad for dogs and have chemicals that can harm them, but our dog treats are fully organic and won't harm the animals. Something challenging was that we would find recipes but then see that they weren't very healthy, so we had to keep searching.     
           We planned a day where we would bake our first batch of dog treats. We baked our first batch on Saturday at Elliot's house. They were a success! My dog ate three cookies. We felt successful and accomplished. We had a little trouble because Elliot was sick, so Sophia made the dough on Tuesday without Elliot, then Elliot came back on Thursday and we baked the treats. The next day it was already the Maker Faire! That morning we had two periods to finish up, in that time we made our glaze and glazed one batch of treats. We made two batches of dog treats. We made Cranberry Coconut dog treats and Peanut Butter Pumpkin Dog treats. We used Sun butter because of the allergy of someone at our school. 
          Something we learned is that, sometimes you have to edit the recipe to make them better. For the first batch of dog treats, we added 1 extra egg, 1 tbsp more almond flour, 1 tbsp more coconut flour, and 1 tbsp more coconut oil. Something else that we learned is that not all things turn out how you want them to, for example the Peanut butter Pumpkin dog treats didn't taste like we wanted them to, even though the dogs liked them.
          Even though the dog treats were a huge success and even people liked eating them, we would make them better by making them even more healthy. We could not use bacon grease next time because it has fat, we would maybe eliminate or use less peanut butter. Our project had a overall cost of $30. If you are thinking of making this make sure to follow your instincts, example: not following the whole recipe exactly. We thought that this project was really fun and enjoyed working together.

Recipes:
https://thelovelylife.org/2019/02/04/cranberry-hearts/
https://pinchofyum.com/homemade-dog-treats

Feel the Heat: SOLAR OVEN (Carly & Alma's Lit Maker Fair Project):

Our Maker Fair project was all together agonizing and had an incredibly helpful affect on our visions on everyday life and in the lab; agonizing in only a few ways, and helpful in millions of others. We decided to make a homemade solar oven using food items from home and materials provided by the school and our supportive teachers. We learned to flex our perseverance muscles in moments where time was the enemy and groove into each others way of collaboration. We observed many ways of building solar ovens, and we adapted many designs to cope with the materials we had present, and we ended making a heat absorption based oven for our the fair. As a team, we used a cardboard box as a vessel and used our knowledge of albedo to make it absorb the most heat, and used multiple reflectors built within the oven. Our inspiration was the fact that burning gas to heat food, emits it into our atmosphere; so we decided to go solar. For other students hoping to construct a solar oven on their own, we would advise testing different reflectors and insulation just in case the structure of your oven differs from other designs; adapt and build. If we had more time as a partnership, we would have tried our oven with more of a variety of foods. This definitely would have helped us gain a more clear insight on how strong, efficient, and amount of resiliency our oven possessed, allowing us to make appropriate edits to our design. 

The instructions that we were following directed us to use saran wrap to hold the heat inside, but instead we tested using different containers and plexiglass to be more sustainable. First, we tried using a plastic square container, but it didn’t heat up fast enough; after 10 minutes it was only at 88℉. Then we used a glass circular container, and our results were about the same as the square one. Next, after doing a lot of research, we decided to try using a sheet of plexiglass from the art room. The temperature got up to 190℉ after 10 minutes. This was the perfect substitute for saran wrap. We then tried melting 1 chocolate chip on a metal tray, and 1 on a sheet of tin foil, and determined that the tin foil reflects heat the best. We learned that to make the best final product, you need to test it using many different materials, and keep improving and updating.

For someone building one at home, our project would most likely cost around $15-$20 for food items and around $30 for cardboard boxes, tin foil, saran wrap, and black paper as an absorber, as well as some kind of plate for holding food.

Resources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMwsxjlr4gg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBmy-AeIzp0&t=2s