This week my team was working on a elbow joint model. My team was originally making a lot of progress until one class period, our model decides to fall apart. The direction we took in making our model was to sculpt out the shape of the hinge joint, almost recreate the bones. We used the foamy clay to sculpt the top of the bones, we sculpted the tops of the humerus, radius and ulna. The remainder of the bone was pvc pipe. But the clay material turned out to not be as strong as we thought it would be.
We originally took this direction because my group thought It would be easier just to recreate it, almost like putting a human arm back together, like as if the bones were puzzle pieces and we just had to fit then all together. While me and Eleanor worked on the bones, Mariana and Adeila worked on creating muscles for our joint. They used a black rubber to represent the muscles and had pipe cleaners on one side of them which represented the tendons. Me and Eleanor used a rubber band to represent the ligaments that connect the bones together
I was quite disappointed in some of the materials that were given to us. It was frustrating to see something we had worked so hard on just fall apart. So I had to take it home and work on it. I did some research and I wasn’t finding what I was looking for. Overall this experience has been disappointing and I’m honestly not looking forward to the rest of the project. I’ve been really stressing out about this joint model and we’re not even knee deep into the details of the actual project.
When I took it home to work on it, I had not found any other good way to create a functional joint model. So I decided that maybe if I use more of the foamy clay and make it thicker, it won’t be as fragile and breakable. When it dried I noticed it was sturdier but it was still cracking as if it was going to break. So, I panicked. I was stuck with this horrid looking model made out of this weak clay and this was the day before our last work day. I decided, what If I wrapped the sculpted bones with the plastic from the plastic baggies to hold together the clay.
Thankfully the plastic worked and it allowed us to put all the parts that originally got destroyed, back together to make the full model.
StarPathDesign 
I agree with you julia, we where very frustrated as well when it came to our design. Your group problem solved very good, we had to stay multiple times just to keep it intact until the day we present it, but thank goodness it was okay. I as well am not really looking foreword to this project, because if i was stressed over a model Id hate to see me with the rest of this project. Hopefully everything ends up okay and we all create wonderful projects. Good Job!!!!
– Erica Guajardo