Making Plastic from Potato

Six students of SMAN 48 Jakarta, through various studies and laboratory tests, they were finally able to create a potato-based plastics with potato as raw materials.

This extraordinary discovery has led the team of SMAN 48 Jakarta became champion on Competition Think Quest International 2011, which followed about 33,000 people in 7603 teams from 52 countries. Delivery of the prize will be conducted in San Francisco Bay Area, United States, October 2011.

The discovery of the plastic potato originated from trial and error and simply apply the theory they can at school. Shape, design, and the thickness of the plastic they make has not been measured explicitly. However, their findings have opened new horizons for the development of science. The elasticity of the plastic they are made with potato base material is very similar to the plastic manufacturer. In addition to successfully make plastic from potatoes which they called bio-plastics, a team of Villa Joanna (16), Muhammad Labib Nauvaldi (16), Ikhsan Habibi (15), Tuwendy (16), FaisalArsya (16), and Ben Hadi Pratama (15)-sixth is now sitting in class XI-science majors are also made of paper made from bamboo stem.

Paper produced from the stem of bamboo that was almost the same as the recycled paper that we often see: a brown and has a thicker fiber. According to Ben Hadi Pratama, a member of the team, the initial idea of making paper from bamboo comes from the Villa and the idea of making plastics from potatoes offered by Labib.