Directors's Cut: Trial 1

Directors's Cut: Trial 1

This...went about as well as could be expected, I guess. Being the first, the no-prior-experience-totally-untested-theory-from-books-only product it was. Basically if you look at the experiment steps you'd be thinking...hey, that emphasis is strange...oh! and this out of the blue apparatus as well, and then you take a look at the results and yup. few balls short of the proverbial ball pit.

Or in other words things went wrong, let me show you why (I think).

• GRB stuck to everything. Every-single-thing-and if-that-thing-didn't-exist-they'll-find-a-way-to-stick-to-it-anyway. No doubt it was dough exhibiting its properties, but still very disruptive to the shape of the balls, so dustings of cornflour are worth possibly decreased consistency of results.
• In a subset of the above, GRB stuck to the strainer used to display and lower them. Unfortunate combination of hot steam and basic properties, will change to bare hands.  

A lot of the dough was left, skewed results severely

• Dots of food colouring in an attempt to reduce the amount of colouring needed rubbed off onto the plate and other GRBs. Returning more traditional method of just mixing colouring into dough.
• Rice dough holds its shape abysmally. Even without multiple weigh-ins and a trip to the displacement can, their shapes flattens between the seconds it took to take a picture for measurements of surface area. Hence: finish as many steps as possible before shaping, and shape more times if necessary. Hopefully the cornflour will help.
•   Water heating at 200°C meant water constantly boiling over. The violent upwards movement of bubbles propelled the GRB upwards as well. Impossible to  discern when they floated naturally with much accuracy, also added (250ml of) water eight times to save the hotplate. So, hotplate at lowest possible setting (120 °C) that's still above boiling point. Future experiments varying amount of heat will just have to have less water, or be incredibly long.