This idea came around when we saw other projects that were centered around food items. This made us think of some of the staple foods from our cultures and we decided to go with these four. Something interesting that was not on the poster was that mofongo’s origin was actually traced back to fufu which is an African dish consisting of mashed plantains/cassava, water, and oil. Fufu was the original dish, but the people of Puerto Rico wanted to try different recipes and mofongo was born as a result. Flan also has traces back to the Roman Empire which was a little surprising, since it is so popular in Latin America.
We used ParametricPlot3D for all three flan parts so that we were able to create multiple different annuluses. For the mofongo, we used a paraboloid equation and played around with it a little until the shape was inverted on the top. We discussed paraboloids in class, so it allowed us to better visualize what we wanted to do for this food. This primarily consists of parametric equations and graphing with multiple variables which are two prime things that were covered in this class. For the plantain and flower, the trig functions were especially used because the plantain needed a hollowed-out cylinder that needed to be a certain height and sit on a certain plane to cover the top and bottom parts of the hollowed part. Using RevolutionPlot3D, we knew correct z-axis placement was essential because it determined what the other food pieces’ axes needed to be to sit on top of the plane. By taking into account what we had learned in class about how things will sit on a plane, it helped us make these changes.
