Preserving Milk with Household Items: A Scientific Approach

[Ronaldo95163]

Cheers guys

We were given a science project to preserve the following using only household items for 5 dats...Chemicals may not be used as well as any external power source like an outlet:
Bread
Milk
and a mystery item which would be presented to us on the day.


One of our teammates already opted for the bread so I decided to go for the milk


My plan was to use a coke bottle, something like this:

and cut it half way and use the cylindrical part

Then get some Styrofoam

and carve it in such a way so that I would be able to insert the half of the coke bottle I'm using into it then make a cover out of styrofoam to make an airtight as possible cover for it to prevent air and moisture from getting down into it.

Afterwards then wrap the entire thing with foil to reflect any radiant energy.

What are your thoughts on it?
Would it be able to keep the milk preserved for the given time period?

 

[jedishrfu]

why cut the bottle? it would hold the milk far better than the styrofoam and cylinder.

Use the styrofoam to surround the bottle instead.

Can you build a thermos?

Can you use water to surround the bottle?

It seems you'd need to keep the milk cold or create powdered milk...

 

[Ronaldo95163]

Yes I can build the thermos...it was my idea at first. I sketchy about it because I wasn't sure if a homemade thermos would be able to keep the milk preserved for 5 days
Water can also be used to surround the bottle too..I would have to keep the water in an insulated environment to prevent it from getting warm though

 

[jedishrfu]

have you investigated cooling by evaporation?

 

[Ronaldo95163]

Sorry for the late reply...I haven't tried that...I went with plan A

This is how it came out:

 

[jedishrfu]

not bad i'd put some added a styro/foil cap on the top too (insulation is thinner there) to make it a totally wrapped cube and then test to see how long it can keep an ice cube to ice water cold. measure via thermometer same time once a day or once every x hours and plot it out to see cooling loss.