Got Milk? Make Plastic!

Rebecca's boys made her this sweet Valentine's Day necklace out of
milk! Not only was this lots of fun to make, it was also very educational! This process turns milk into a mailable solid that will dry very hard. All you need is milk and a little vinegar. Jonah thought it was so cool, he plans on using this for his upcoming science fair.


We made one pendent and used 1 cup of skim milk. If you wanted to make a larger project you would need to use more milk. The one cup made about 1 1/2 tablespoon of "plastic".


What you need:

• skim milk



• vinegar

For every cup of milk you will need 1 tablespoon of vinegar.

Heat your milk over medium heat until it is hot, but do not boil!Take off the stove and stir in vinegar. The milk will separate into curds and whey!Using a fine strainer, strain the milk. Do not press the curds into the strainer (they might stick). You could also use a coffee filter.Dump the curds onto a paper towel and blot off the excess liquid.(sorry, the pic is a little dark)Next we pressed the curds into a flat disk. You could also mold the curds freestyle.We used a small cookie cutter to cut out the pendent. We used a skewer to make a hole, but next time we would use something bigger. The plastic shrunk a little as it dried.
It took the pendent a few days to be totally dry. Then we painted it using nail polish. (you could use other acrylic paint) Then mom had a cute necklace just in time for Valentine's Day!