NOTE: Sorry, the pictures are not available, but hopefully, this description can give you a clear image of our design: A thick layer with 5 layers of foil, one layer of cut-ed rubber bands, one layer of bubble rapper, and a gigantic cloth-covered handle. It is also attached with a hanging small lid. The ‘jacket’ can be bulky for a mug, and it’s very stuffy.

In science, we designed a cup-insulator. The device is to keep the mug warm longer than the mug without the insulator. I was in a group with Erica and Connie, and we did some investigations that foil, rubber bands, cloth, and bubble-rappers are the materials that are likely to keep the mug warm for a while.

Our designing process was pretty good, we decided that we should have a “jacket” for the mug. We listed out the materials that we might use:

• Cloth
• Felt
• Rubber bands
• Bubble rappers
• Foil
• Velcro

After that, we started planning. Our shape is very basic, and one strategy is that we will keep on cutting the same shape and eventually tape or hot-glue it onto the original piece. Since foil is the most essential and most helpful thing to keep a hot item warm, we decided that the foil should be our origin of the shape.

My claim is that rapping the essential materials is better than rapping layers of materials. And this is also a lesson that we learned.

During the experiment, we learned that foil and felt is the most essential way to be a cup-insulator. According to our project, we made the layer too thick with unessential materials and led to the majority of difficulty rapping the jacket on the mug. This happened because we at first know that the more the better, so we rapped tons of bubble rappers, foil, and felt around the mug. But this is not scientific because we did not consider the function of each material.

Finally, we managed to change our original design a little bit and succeeded on the project test.

I’m proud of my team’s work because it eventually, and unexpectedly worked since our water temperature only dropped 13 degrees.

Something that maybe we should do differently is to get the mug a cap and maybe have the jacket a little thinner.

I think the hardest thing about this project is making a well-constructed cup insulator in a short amount of time and the material has to be successful. It’s very challenging because you would need to generate all kinds of ideas and combine others’ too.

Some limitations our group experienced is the material and time. Sometimes, the material that we wanted at school is not there, and we might be forgetful to bring materials from home. The second thing is time, where we only get three days, and we don’t get enough time to redesign and make our project better.

Overall, I am very happy with my team and my project outcome. If we can do this design again next time, I would probably think a little more.