Filtering Vegetable Oil: Day 1

      Today in class we filtered vegetable oil. First we put a strainer over the bucket, but we left a space in the strainer to have a place where the particles can sit. Next we folded cheese cloth in half so there would be two layers of cloth instead of one. Then we duct taped the cheese cloth onto the bucket to keep it from falling off the bucket. After that we started taking beakers and pouring the oil into our filter. Once we started pouring more and more oil into the filter, we realized that the two layers of  cheese cloth was not doing anything to filter the vegetable oil. So we took the layers of cheese cloth off. The strainer was doing the work of filtering the oil, but the more oil we poured into the strainer the more it would get clogged by the small particles. What tried to do was get a student to hold the strainer in a different direction so the oil would filter through a different part of the strainer. When we were done filtering the oil we did not have time to filter it a second time or heat the oil on the hot plates. Tomorrow I think we should not use cheese cloth because we it didnt help filter anything.