I was recently reading on Elsie Marley that bloggers shouldn’t be afraid to post their dud projects. After all, not every project is a smashing amazing success and sometimes failures are worth talking about too!
Well here is my latest bummer. It’s not that this project didn’t work, it just didn’t work well. I have an idea of how to possibly make it work next time but haven’t been through the second trial run yet. Still, as it is Halloween today this is the perfect day to talk about this science project: Gelatin Worms!
Gelatin Worms
Materials:
- Juice
- Unflavored gelatin
- Food Coloring
- Flexible straws
- Baking Pan
- Cutting Board
- Rolling Pin
The next time I attempt this project I will avoid the gelatin/juice combo and go with Jello. I think the gelatin/juice ratio is where my project went wrong.
Instructions:
- STEP ONE Â Make the gelatin mix. Empty a pack of gelatin into your baking pan along with a couple drops of food coloring. Add 1 cup of boiling juice per pack of gelatin mix to the pan and stir gently. Alternatively, follow the directions to make Jello and pour mixture into a baking pan.
- STEP TWO Â When the gelatin or Jello has cooled a little start adding straws to the pan. Make sure to submerge the straws completely in the liquid. Then weight them down with plates or mugs.
- STEP THREE Â Refrigerate. Put the whole concoction into the fridge for a few hours to let cool and harden.
- STEP FOUR  Harvest! Take the worm farm out of the fridge and remove weights. Pull out individual straws and place them on a cutting board. Starting on one end of a straw use your rolling pin to slowly push the worms out of the straws.This is the tricky part; our lovely worms really didn’t come out of the straws so easily. I noticed that air pockets had formed in many of the straws so the “worms” came out rather piecey instead of nice and smooth. In the end it didn’t really matter because the process was fun for the kids and they loved eating the worms, no matter what they looked like!
So my final word of advice would be to try this with Jello. I hope that solves the texture problem we ended up with.
Enjoy and Happy Halloween!
Melissa says
I agree…I think it’s important for people to see that we’re human too.
It’s far too easy to interpret that we’re all “perfect” here in blog-land, so it’s very refreshing! Especially with these slimy gelatin worms! We had the same kind of luck. Couldn’t get the little buggers out of the straw.
I have to say here, that yours really didn’t look bad to me. I know they sure looked A LOT better than ours did. Especially after I attacked the straws with a pair of scissors!! 😉
Ana Dziengel says
Oh bummer! Did you use Jello or gelatin? I’m trying to fine tune this one so it works WELL!
Zoikes!