Be Wary or End Up Silly

Last Sunday afternoon, I invaded my grandmother's sanctuary a.k.a. the kitchen and attempted to make an imitation of Silly Putty for my polymer and fiber engineering introduction class. After one cooking experiment with my project group, taking a recipe of sorts from the Internet seemed to work well. I should have knocked on wood after thinking such a thing!

There are three methods to making an imitation of silly putty: starch solution, borax solution, or egg method. I went for the egg method seeing how my family had all the ingredients and saving my family a trip out of the house.

Egg method:

- 1/4 cup of Elmer Glue

- 3 tablespoons of water

- 2 raw eggs

- 3/4 cup of flour

So once in the kitchen, I ended up catching the attention of my mother, who was already cooking some Asian sausages. Catching her attention was probably the first sign of when I should have found other means of making the imitation of silly putty. Nonetheless, she helped me gather the ingredients and let me mix it up however I please. My first try ended in a misleading failure, which led to my mother to bring all her fancy equipment to simply mix my concoction seconds later.

Again, the ingredients were assembled and one by one dropped to their doom into an endless whirlpool of a peculiar solution. This time the solution was solidifying and looking more like silly putty than my previous attempt. All seems well... too well soon enough. Even with all that equipment, the concoction didn't come very close to looking like silly putty aside from the fact it was a solidifying solution. We decided to take a break from the mixing and see what was going wrong or whatever was lack thereof. That was a bad idea.

Random gunk splattered all over the kitchen. It was silent after the platter. Moments later my nearby dog could be heard shaking some of the solution off her body with futility and more moments afterward, my father raised his voice wondering who bombed the kitchen.

Getting to the point, don't trust every word of the Internet even after numerous good experiences as well as do things slowly especially with cooking equipment.

Side notes:

- Need 1-2 cups of flour for the recipe to "work"

- The Silly Putty Imitation is edible

- I managed to make my silly putty but ironically, my first attempt was the better of the two tries