Firstly, we gathered the plastic bags that were offered to us in the lab (Type 2 and Type 4 plastic bags) these bags are made up of polyethylene both high and low density. We cut them up in order for them to fit the criteria and sizes for the heating press. Once we cut the bags up and made sure they fit in between the baking paper that was also offered to us and began pressing the bags together with an iron. Once the plastic was ironed and fused together we cut the plastic relative to the size that we needed in order to create the purse.
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After that, we had to poke holes into the plastic for the buttons to be installed and fuse the buttons in place using the instrument shown below. Also to note in order to make this coin purse it took two male pieces and two female pieces.
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Finally, once we were done with all that we needed to fold the plastic in a way that would allow us to have a triangular-shaped pouch that would be able to fit coins.
This was our final product:
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The activity was very fun to do, and in addition to that, we felt like we were able to truly see firsthand, how we can use plastics (in this case plastic bags) and come up with an item or accessory that we can practically use. Creating this plastic purse, we did not really face too many difficulties, it was just that we were very skeptical about how much we should be ironing the plastic bags because we did not have a temperature gauge telling us the temperature of the iron in order for us to understand whether it was too hot to use on the plastics. Additionally figuring out the buttons were quite troublesome, however, we managed to pull through and figure it out.
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