This experiments incorporates biopolymers to show to students that biopolymers have important nonfood applications. It alse demonstrates that many biopolymers can be plasticized. In the presents experiment the use of biopolymers made from renewble and biodegradable resources aims to draw upon students interest in environment. An easily constructed student tensile strength measuring instrument is used. This article show that data obatained with the student instrument are comparable to data obtained with industry-standard equipment.