Memorandum

To: Meredith Ren, Introduction to Engineering 1201 Professor

From: Arthur Green, Carina Rojas, Jose Duran, Sean Sharp

Date: 23 June 2021

Subject: Final Report on Edible Scale Project

INTRODUCTION

One of the main challenges for Engineers in today’s world is the idea of solid waste

management. Defined as the accumulation of disposed items over the course of time, the

treating, and disposing process of unwanted materials by consumers. The sub-Challenge to the

main challenge is figuring out how to make everyday items using the disposed material; better

known by the term of Recycling. Recycling has become a major issue in today’s world because

of the growing rate at which disposed items are being thrown out, and the negative impact that

some consumer goods are having on the planet. For example, plastic, specifically plastic bottles.

Other issues include the decreasing amount of appropriate land space needed to take the

unwanted materials to be either burned or buried. Not only has space become an issue but the

population rate is growing at a steady pace, which means the rate of unwanted materials that

need to be disposed of will continue to grow. The solution, Engineering New ways of storing,

treating, and reusing the unwanted material to make everyday items will need to be designed. For

this Engineering project, my team is challenged with the idea of brainstorming, designing,

constructing, and consuming a freely movable scale. The idea is to use recyclable items that are

safe for human consumption. With this project comes many constraints, for starters, my team and
I must be within our budget for this project, we are confined to using items that are safe for

human consumption, we also must be sure to design our project to be freely movable, meaning

anyone can move the scale from point A to point B without strain. We must also Engineer a scale

that accurately and precisely calculates the mass of any item within the weight class of 1-100

grams. Also, the scale should be designed to be precise in every measurement that is taken.

RESEARCH AND GATHERING DATA

Before we began brainstorming any ideas for the project first we sought information on

how scales and balances measure weight. Since weight and mass are two distinct things we had

to figure out what a scale measures and what a balance measures. Weight is the measurement of

the amount of force the earth is pulling on an amount of mass. Weight is equal to mass times

acceleration of gravity. A scale measures the force being applied to the mechanism by the object

being measured. Therefore, a scale measures weight. Mass is the measurement of how much

matter is within an object. A balance measures how heavy something is compared to another

object which we know the mass of. Therefore, a balance would measure mass. By understanding

this basic information we can then proceed to figure how each one works.

A scale relies on the elastic principle. This means it requires a spring of some sort to be

able to measure the amount of force being applied to it. To measure elastic force on a spring it is

f=kx or spring constant times the distance the spring traveled after being compressed. Making a

functional scale using a spring made out of food would be difficult as through our research there

were no results of springs made out of food.

A balance is based on the balancing principle. This would only require a known mass and

a lever to find the balance between two masses. Mathematically the mass times the distance from

the pivot point of one object on one side is proportional to the mass times the distance from the
pivot point of the other object on the other side. This would not rely on any sophisticated spring

system or complicated mechanism to find the mass of an object. This would be much easier to

construct in comparison to a spring scale.

BRAINSTORMING

Considering the constraints that my team and I were challenged with; we choose to do the

balance scale. After a significant amount of research, we found that designing a balance scale

would be the best option for us and what we are looking to achieve, which is designing and

constructing a freely movable recycled scale. We found that if correctly built, the integrity of the

scale would provide for the best accurately and precise measurements of items weighed. Also,

we feel as though the balance scale will be the most efficient and effective financially speaking,

being that we have a purchasing budget for this project. Also, for this project we have spent a

significant amount of time figuring out what materials to use for each piece of our scale. This has

been especially challenging yet exciting because we must make sure all materials are safe for

human consumption. A few examples of possible materials that we have brainstormed about

using are Twizzlers, Sour straws, Jellybeans, Rice Krispy cereal, Marshmallows, chocolate,

Cucumber, bananas, peanuts, and Nutella. These are the main materials that we would need to

construct our project. The materials listed above have been identified by my team and I as

materials that would hold their integrity and when constructed together build the perfect freely

movable scale that measures mass precisely and accurately.

ANALYZE POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS/MAKE A DECISION

Our edible scale consists of various edibles. Starting from the base, we have decided

to use homemade Rice Krispies since it is easy to bind together and is suitable to support the rest
of the scale components. The next part is called the support, also known as the pillar. The support

is a vertical structure that is going to be connected to the base. We concluded that the support

would be made from sugar wafers. Sugar wafers were chosen since the design of the wafers can

be built on top of each other using an edible adhesive, making the support structurally sound.

The following part is the horizontal beam. The midpoint of the beam will be connected to the

support that will be held together with the pivot. The team agreed on several options for the

beam and pivot. The beam can be made of banana, celery, or churro. These items were chosen

since they can be symmetrical or can be designed to become symmetrical throughout. At the

same time, the pivot can be made of candy cane, stick candy, or pocky. We choose these items

since the listed items already hold a cylindrical shape that needs little to no adjustments. The

next part is the strings that connect at the end of each side of the beam may consist of gummy

string or cucumber noodles. Two small bowls will be connected to each side using the strings.

We concluded that the mentioned items, when spaced out evenly, can withstand the mass of the

weighted item. The team narrowed down to two options that bowls will be made of chocolate

using molds to create the chocolate bowls or baked tortillas. Both of the mentioned items were

chosen since both items can withstand an object's mass when shaped the right way. Lastly, to

connect all the parts that need adhesive, the team concluded that Nutella, peanut butter, or melted

sugar could connect the required components since the items consist of a sticky substance.

IMPLEMENT

The team decided to create a balancing scale as it was the most cost and time efficient

when considering the other options available. As a group we created a word document where we

listed all the materials that we could possibly occupy to begin constructing the first prototype.

Following the materials, the group decided on splitting the balance into parts: foundation,
vertical beam, horizontal beam, and holding plates. Each part of the balance will be constructed

separately. Arthur chose to construct the foundation, Jose constructed the vertical beam, Carina

will construct the horizontal beam, and Sean will construct the holding plates.

Final Blueprint:

The image is the final blueprint of the scale project.

The team’s objective is to construct a scale almost

identical to the blueprint and make it out of edible

items.

Construction of Final prototype:

The vertical beam was constructed first. The vertical beam needed to be constructed first

due to the base/foundation hardening too quickly. If the base was constructed first then it would

harden on its own and the vertical beam would have to be put in the middle by cutting a whole,

however, since the base would have hardened already it will not stick to the vertical beam

leaving it slightly unstable. To deal with this issue we decided to construct the vertical beam first.

The vertical beam consists of 7 sugar wafers joined together with Nutella and peanut butter.
Joining the sugar wafers was simple as it only required 4 to build the main structure. The rough

idea was to join the sugar wafers with one another like so:

This structure would give a rectangular beam that was 1 ¼” x 1 ¼”. The sugar wafers were

united with Nutella at first using a butter knife. The Nutella was placed in between the area

where the sugar wafers connected. This process was repeated for all the sugar wafers which were

connected. Once this piece was ready, the construction of the platform in which the horizontal

beam would hold was constructed. Three more wafers were used for this addition. The sugar

wafers would be placed right next to the main beam like so:
First, two sugar wafers were connected to the side of the main structure. Another sugar wafer

was cut in half and each half was put on top of the side sugar wafers. The side sugar wafers

would act as supports to the half sugar wafer. They would all be connected and joined together

by nutella and peanut butter. Once the sugar wafers were bound together the entire structure was

put on its side and put into the freezer for about 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, the joints where

the sugar wafers were connected were covered with a second layer of adhesive being the peanut

butter. Once all the places where the sugar wafers connected were covered in peanut butter the

entire structure was put into the freezer again for 30 minutes. Freezing the structure would

solidify the nutella and peanut butter making the structure stronger and the vertical beam would

be finished. The next part of the project that will be built would be the base.

The base of our edible scale project was created using safe materials for human

consumption and when mixed make for a great treat, especially for our target audience and their

peers. Because we decided to target children between the ages of 5 and 11 years old, it was
important especially from a marketing standpoint to design edible bases that would be appealing

to children in that age bracket. After consulting with a diverse group of five children, it was clear

that their choice would be Rice Krispy treats. The children described rice Krispy treats as being

delicious and aesthetically pleasing depending upon the type of cereal used to make the treat. In

addition to satisfying our target audience the rice Krispy base also was the perfect mixture of

product that we needed for the vertical beam. Initially, the team knew we were going to need a

base that acted the same as concrete does; meaning, Once mixed, the solution is solidified and

whatever is in between the mixture is solidified and held in an upright position. The process used

to create a stable base such as this must be carefully planned and executed, because adding an

excessive amount of ingredients would have thrown off the texture that we needed to be sure the

vertical beam would hold its place steady. The process used to prepare our base is as follows; the

stove top needed to be preheated to a level of three in a half for about 10 minutes to make sure

the 6in pop that we used was able to distribute the heat equally throughout the entire pot. The

next step was to place half a stick of unsalted butter into a pan and let that half of the stick melt

all the way before placing one more half stick in the pot to melt completely. Once the second half

of stick butter has completely melted, you’d want to go ahead and place three cups of

marshmallows in a pot and stir them until they melt completely. Once this is done, you’d want to

pour half a box of rice Krispy into the mix of butter and marshmallows. At this point the stove

top should be reduced to zero heat and a constant mix should applied thoroughly until mixture is

ready to be poured into a 6inch circular pan even spread, lastly, before leaving the base to cool,

you’d want to take the vertical beam and a fork and make space to place the beam directly in the

center of the 6 inch circular pan in an upright position and then place the connected beam and
base in the freezer for 1 hour. The next part of the project that was built would be the Vertical

beam that connects to the horizontal beam.

● Final base and horizontal beam

connected.

The Horizontal beam was constructed

by using an unpeeled banana. The first

part was to cut the stem from the

banana to cut off the extra weight and

make the banana as even as possible. We determined the banana midpoint by balancing the

banana between our fingers. A 3/16-drill bit was used to drill a hole into the banana. An attempt

was made to insert the pivot using a breadstick, but the hole was too small. It was then decided to

use a larger drill bit 5/16-drill bit. After analyzing the horizontal beam, the team concluded that

the banana was too heavy and could conflict with the vertical beam. Therefore, the team decided

to replace the banana with a celery stick. According to our blueprint, the team determined that

the horizontal beam should measure 8 inches in length. The celery stick came from a celery

bunch which one was cut out. To make the celery stick as even as possible, we cut the celery at
each end. Once the team determined that the celery stick was even as possible, we ensured that

the desired length was achieved. The team then drilled a hole using a 3/16-drill bit. The

breadstick was then inserted into the hole, which was a perfect fit. The next and final part of the

project would be the string and weight plates.

During our experimentation on the prototypes we were attempting to use chocolate

bowls as the weight plates. We attempted to melt some chocolate and then press a circular

bottom cup to form the chocolate into a bowl-like shape. The team was supposed to quickly put

the cup with the chocolate into a significantly colder environment such as into the freezer.

Unfortunately this last part of the process was forgotten and the attempt to make the chocolate

bowls failed. We then acquired an orange instead because the team thought this would be more

successful. The orange was cut into symmetrical halves and the insides of the fruit were removed

leaving only the skin. The team acquired a drill with a 3/16 drill-bit to cut two identical holes

towards the top of the skins on opposite sides for each orange skin half. Finally the team

acquired sweetarts ropes and cut them into identical halves. The ropes were then put through the

holes on the orange skins and were wrapped around the horizontal beam to keep the bowls

suspended.

POST-IMPLEMENT REVIEW

The objective of the project was to create an edible scale capable of accurately

determining the mass or weight of an unknown object. The edible project our team created was

composed of fully edible items and was able to measure the mass of sweet tarts with moderate

precision. The edible scale our team created was based on the balance principle meaning we had

to know the mass of at least one object being measured. The objects we chose to measure were

peanuts which were measured with a digital food scale. The peanuts came out to be 20 grams and
we used this as our known mass. The edible scale we created is based on the balancing principle

therefore it will only be useful when you are trying to figure out how much of one object is the

same as the mass you already know. In this case we knew the peanuts were 20 grams so we

would be measuring how many sweet tarts it would take to be equal to 20 grams. The edible

scale we created was moderately accurate as the measurement of the sweet tarts came out to be

23 grams once measured by the digital scale. Our percent error would be 15% therefore our scale

was 85% accurate in measuring the mass of an unknown object. Our team sees this as a

successful project that met the requirements and solved the problem it was designed to address.

As a team, we believe that we could take our product further and deliver even more

significant benefits if we had a long time to improve our project. The things we would improve

will be changing some of the materials to make our project more user-friendly and less

time-consuming. Such as changing the adhesive. The adhesive we used was Nutella and peanut

butter. Though the adhesive achieved what we wanted it to do, we did have to put the product

into the freezer, causing a more prolonged waiting period to put the product together. Changing

the adhesive to something more tedious would result in the product being more sustainable and

shortening or even eliminating the freezing periods. Therefore, by changing some of the

components, we could make the product significantly bigger, resulting in weighing more

significant items over 100 grams. Not only would our product be able to weigh items over 100

grams, but our product could be more user-friendly. By having our product more user-friendly,

we could cater to teachers and homeschool to use our product to teach students about math and

introduction into engineering.

Throughout the duration of our team project, we learned a lot of lessons that got us to our

final product. The main three lessons that we learned were safety, creating a reasonable budget,
and maintaining effective communication. Safety is the number one priority, we learned that it’s

imperative to accurately create and stay within a reasonable budget and we learned that effective

communication throughout the duration of the project will bring the success necessary for the

project. Safety, being the most important lesson throughout any project, especially this project

because we were required to consume a portion of it. The consumption part of the project was

interesting because we were challenged to put time into thinking about the foods that we could

use for each portion of the project. While this was the most critical part of the project, throwing

this curve ball in made the project more enjoyable because we used some of our favorite treats.

Creating a reasonable budget came second on our list, initially we budgeted 20 dollars for the

project, but we quickly realized that we went overboard once we got back from the market.

Going over budget we realized that in future projects, staying within budget will be just as

important as safety considering it’ll be a requirement once we as engineers start working on

larger scale projects. Lastly, Effective communication within our team played a major role in our

success, it allowed us to smoothly work out the details of every part of our project, which led us

to the success we ultimately achieved. We believe that effective communication within any

project, especially future projects that we’ll work on as engineers, is important because it shows

everyone is actively involved in the process and it transparently shows the work that’s being

completed.
Our team created two excel sheets listing the costs of the entire project (table on left) and costs

for the product itself (table on right)

PROJECT COMPLICATIONS

There were many complications throughout the whole process of brainstorming and constructing

our edible project. Our biggest complications for the project were location and time. Since the

class is only six weeks long it would have been optimal to have more time in order to effectively

design the project in a more precise and functional manner. As engineers though, we understand

that time is sometimes not in your favor and you have to work against the clock while also

maintaining functionality and success in your projects. Location was also a major complication

because of where we live. The members of the group live in very separate corners of the city of

Houston. It was not so easily available for us to meet in person and experiment more on the

project. We instead had to rely on many virtual meetings to discuss the project. Another

complication was the climate and how it affected the materials of the project. We attempted to

use chocolate and peanut butter as adhesive to hold the beams together as well as attaching it to
the base but it did not work in our favor. In just a matter of a few minutes, the chocolate and

peanut butter reached a low enough temperature that made them start to melt and made the

balance lose its integral structure. The team also attempted to use a banana as the horizontal

beam but this proved to not be successful because of the weight and natural curvature of a

banana.
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