3D - 2

How do you build your own 3D model of a plant cell using non food items?

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1. Hey! I had this project in middle school. It was great fun! Here's what I did: First, get a square tupperware container. Paint the inside green, and let it dry. Find some round, 4-hole buttons and hot-glue them to the inside of the container sporadically: these are your plasmodesmata. Make sure all of that is dry before continuing. Then, begin the below instructions. The first part is what you need, the second indented part is what you do and what this represents. It helps to make a key to all the structures as you do them. 1. $0.25 plastic toy container [3 of the bigger kind] (You usually find these in machines where you put in a quarter and a toy or a ring or a tattoo comes out in a plastic egg-like box. Make sure the round part is clear. The top part doesn't matter.) Take two of these and glue them together so that they form a bubble. Leave this empty; it represents your vacuole. 2. Either: plastic tubing, yarn, or clay. This is for the golgi body. Either cut different lengths of the tubing or yarn and glue them together in bent shapes, or use the clay to do the same basic thing (roll it into a snake and press the snakes together, bending them so that they look right.) 3. Small, round, plastic beads. These are your peroxisomes. You don't need to do anything with these. 4. Saran wrap Take the saran wrap and press it into the inside of the tupperware, glueing it as needed. This is your cell membrane. 5. Packing peanuts These are used for both your chloroplasts and your mitochondria. Paint them different colors: don't forget to put the squiggles on the mitochondria! 6. Totally clear hair-gel with little-to-no bubbles. Now that the saran wrap is on the inside of the tupperware container, you can very slowly and gently empty the hair gel out into the container (cytoplasm!). Fill it about half-way, and put in the vacuole. Then, finish filling it. 7. Longer tube-shaped plastic beads and some clear string or fishing line String the beads onto the string. This is your rough endoplasmic reticulum. Then... 8. Seed beads (One color only.) Glue some of the seed beads onto the bigger beads (rough ER) for the ribosomes. You can now put this into the hair gel. Make sure to set it in so that it looks like the rough ER. Now, sprinkle these beads into the hair-gel and gently mix them in. 9. Small pom-pom ball Take the remaining plastic bubble from step 1 and a small piece of saran wrap. Color the saran wrap and wrap it around the egg, gluing it into place. Do not seal off the top. Using some of the hair gel, fill the egg and place the pom-pom in the middle. Pull the saran wrap over the opening, and glue it shut. 10. Friendship-bracelet string This is the smooth endoplasmic reticulum. Place it into the gel so that it looks the way it should, just like you did with the rough ER. Assembly: Some of the assembly is already done, as you can see. The rest of it is simple: just push the pieces into the hairgel, pop on the tupperware lid, and you're done!