Kitchen Experiments part 1

Since I couldn't find anything on the web about tapioca starch used as a waterproofing agent, and because a friend assured me that thats how it was being used in projects she saw in Thailand, and because I bought a tapioca root just to take a picture of it for my competition entry and it was just sitting in the bottom of my refrigerator, I decided to do some experimenting. I haven't done any experiments like this since my high school science fair days, and the materials and information sources are pretty crude. I read on-line how to make flour out of the root - you make chips out of it and dry it in the sun, and then you grind it to a powder.

Looking up how to make the starch though, they kept saying it gets 'extracted.' I'm hoping I can make a glue of sorts like I make out of wheat flour when I do papermache. The idea is to grind up the dried chips, and then cook it in water and see what I come up with. If it looks like the paste I can make with wheat flour, I'll try testing it.

I figured any idea of trying to use tapioca out in the field as a sealant, would have to be incredibly low tech too. Something people can make and use without controlled settings. It's been rainy out, so I sliced up the root and spread it out on some baking paper and it's sitting in my oven (which isn't on at the moment). I'll set it out if the sun decides to shine and see what I get. I'm not ruining my coffee grinder on this though, I'll have to get a decent powder using my blender. I know, I really should use a mortar and pestle, but it's somewhere in my basement, and I have no idea where to start looking for it.

I put the chips out in the sun, and so far just bugs are trying to eat it. It still looks moist, not dry and flaky like I thought. Maybe it would have done better staying in my oven.