« There's Always Room for Jell-O | Main | Despite the Content -- This is Still About the Jell-O Bath »
October 25, 2006
Continuing Saga of the Jell-O Bath
You never realize just how little you know about Jell-O until you decide to fill a bathtub full of the stuff.
Some of the things I had to consider when planning the Jell-O bath were:
How many gallons of water did the typical early-80's bathtub hold? At the time of the Jell-O bath experiment I lived in a small college town. There wasn't a Lowe's and Home Depot on every corner (not like today -- I'm fewer than 10 miles away from three Lowe's and three Home Depots.) so, finding out how many gallons of water I'd need to mix Jell-O for wasn't going to be as easy as making a trip to the corner hardware store. Some engineering friends from the University of Cincinnati volunteered to do the math for this item. (The average tub, these days, holds about 30 gallons of water. At the time, by eyeballing it, I thought a tub was about 50 gallons.)
What was it likely to cost? Like I said, considering what it is -- a fine, colored powder -- Jell-O was sort of expensive on a college budget for the quatity I thought I might need. The fact that it is magic ... it goes from a powder to a liquid and then a solid AND THEN stays a solid ... made it cooler, but no less expensive. According to some research I just conducted, it looks like you add one cup of boiling water and one cup of cold water to a 4-serving package of Jell-O. That 4-serving package currently costs 99 cents.
Or, a dollar for two cups of Jell-O in 2007 dollars. There are 16 cups in a gallon. So, Jell-O costs $8.00 a gallon. A thirty-gallon tub would cost $240.00 to fill. If two bodies displace 15 gallons of water you drop the cost to $120.00. At the time I thought a tub was 50 gallons -- but I still thought bodies would displace about 1/2, taking us down to about 25 gallons of Jell-O. Now we're back to $200.00, which is more than I'd spend to fill a tub with Jell-O.
But! We're talking 2007 dollars here. I don't recall what Jell-O cost in the early '80s, but we'll say half of what it cost today, or about $100. Which is more than I would have spent then. (Even spreading the cost out over several months.)
What we need to consider here is that a package of Jell-O yields two cups of a tasty, gelatin treat. I didn't need tasty. I needed a tub full of something sort of solid to squish around in. I had a feeling Jell-O could be diluted a bit more than the instructions suggested and still produce the results I desired. Experimentation revealed that a package of Jell-O could be mixed with four cups of water and still produce good results.
How would you get it to set up in a tub? Ice cubes. Prior to the Jell-O bath experiment I didn't know you could add ice cubes to the mix and get it to set up without the use of a fridge.
Tomorrow we fill a tub! Or maybe the next day ... maybe tomorrow we find a volunteer.
Posted by delmer at October 25, 2006 3:43 PM
Comments
I can't wait until tomorrow to find out if my wife was involved in this one! Say it ain't so!
D
Posted by: Darrell at October 25, 2006 9:59 PM
I just love coming back to your blog after a bit of time off...I never know what i am going to get.
You might get industrial amounts of Jello at Sam's or Costco, fyi.
Posted by: karla at October 26, 2006 9:49 AM
I hear jell-o is good for your skin too.
Posted by: Phoenix at October 26, 2006 1:41 PM
Darrell: This would have been PS.
Karla: Hey, it just occured to me. The "This would have been PS" applies for you as well. In your case it means "Pre Sam's."
Phoenix: I don't know about the skin. But I did find another use. More on that later.
Posted by: delmer at October 26, 2006 4:37 PM
Just a reminder of one forgotten consideration---"how many packs of Jello might I find in Mom's pantry?"
Posted by: Granny at October 27, 2006 8:26 AM