can you make butter from whole milk?!

Heavy whipping cream has a 36% butterfat content. Whole milk only has 3.25 That is quite a big difference... I would say you cannot use whole milk to make butter.

You used to be able to, but that was before milk was homogenised.
A teacher back in primary school had us do it as some sort of lesson on fat/cream in milk. The milk bottle (shows you how long ago this was) was passed round the class and everyone took turns to "churn" it... basically we each rolled the bottle back and forth for about five minutes. After an hour or two about 1/8th had turned into butter.
A lot of work for a tiny amount of butter. But as I said, this was when the cream was evident and used to sit on top of the milk, I don't *think* this could be done with homogenised milk, or if it could it would require a lot more effort.

Life

Like one of the other respondents, I made this at school. Back in the days of milk bottles you could skim the cream from the top of the milk. Do this with about 4 or 5 pins of milk and you can make butter with this. Whole milk doesn't have enough fat.

Andy

Not enough fat in whole milk to make butter. You'll be there a long time waiting for it to turn to butter if you use that. You need to use heavy cream.