When I reached the clinic, firstly, I got to see how a dental model is made. Not the entire thing, of course, but how plaster should be added to water until it turns semi-solid. You also have to tap it along the table for the pores to stop forming. Then, I was told to 'play around' with the plaster and shape it into a 1-inch cube. I thought it was going to be somewhat similar to playing with clay at first, but as it turns out, it was way harder (in my opinion). The most difficult part of the entire process was that no matter how many times I try to make it into a square and slowly lift the edges up to make it 3D, the plaster, in its rather liquid state (I think it felt even more like liquid to me than it actually was since I was the one struggling to make the cube), continued to flow off of my workspace. The plaster wasn't really wet in the slightest, but it was too fluid for me to keep shaping it.
While I was still working on it, the dentist called me to observe a procedure. When I asked him what I should do with my unfinished plaster, he told me to leave it. I was a little worried it'll harden by the time I go back to it, but I had to watch the session (and I haven't watched one in a while) first.
The patient was a 10-year-old boy, who had a cavity, which had formed a hole and some small black spots on his teeth. In the end he got 2 fillings and extracted one of his teeth (1 tooth extraction). I had a false notion that the procedures I used to think were 'basic' for a job as a dentist (even though I still can't even think of doing such things) tend to take a shorter time than most. It may be true, but even though I'm not quite sure whether it's because I was standing up the entire time or because the amount of concentration the dentist was showing, it seemed to take a much longer time than what I thought. It was so much that I blanked out a little right before the extraction, and when he asked me if I'd like to try extracting a tooth, I almost nodded my head without thinking (I vigorously shook my head when he asked me again). I couldn't and still can't quite fully trust myself to properly extract a tooth, especially when I've never done anything like it before. In the dentist's hand, everything went fine and well.
By the time it was over, it was almost time for me to go back home. But before that, I had to check my plaster to see what happened to it. As it turns out, when it's outside for long, it solidifies as expected. So, when I looked at it, the plaster had turned into a lump (with some pores at the backside) instead of a cube- I'm still not sure how else I can describe it, but it was definitely not a cube nor was it 1 inch.
In fact, this is what it looked like:
When I got home, I tried to make it smoother and into an actual semi-cube at the very least. I used a knife to try to cut it (because it really wouldn't work with my bare hands) and polished it with sandpaper. It's not perfect, but it was a lot of progress from the lump. I'll admit, I did get some help from my mom.
Final result:
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