Pottery II – Firing Data, Group A

At 1:22 we started the fire. It was a little tricky to get going because of the wind, and kept collapsing. We added more kindling. We also tried to use a probe to take the temperature once the fire started, but it didn’t work, so we used a thermometer gun for the rest of the experiment.

At 1:36 we took the first fire temperature – 627 degrees celsius. Then we took the weights of the loom weights, in grams.

Group member	Weight of Loom Weight #1	Weight of Loom Weight #2	Weight of Loom Weight #3
Margie	190	193	201
Eliot	191	195	197
Hal’a	201	192	192
Dane	168	168	179
Phoebe	171	156	156

The dimensions were the same for all of our weights: 3 inches across, 1 inch hole, 1 inch thickness. However, Dane’s were 4 inches across, 1.5 inches in the hole, 1 inch arm, and had a 0.75 height.

Then we put them by the fire. I took temperatures at various times throughout the experiment. Across the top of this table are the times when I recorded the temperatures. The row all the way to the left are the individuals’ pottery pieces. In the table, I list (1-3) the temperatures (in degrees Celsius) of their 3 pieces of pottery. There is a lot of variation, as the placement of the pottery around the fire REALLY made a difference because of the wind. After each temperature reading, each piece was moved closer to the fire.

	1:51	1:54	1:59	2:09	2:17	2:32
Halia	22, 27, 19		35, 35, 33	100, 80, 63	213, 261, 280	394, 163, 113
Eliot	50, 40, 45		83, 65, 94	88, 68, 59	101, 94, 96	222, 374, 320
Margie		26, 25 24	107, 100, 62	282, 283, 200	430, 320, 150
Phoebe		21, 24, 25	63, 41, 46	75, 68, 271	386, 138, 103	230, 329, 357
Dane		25, 21, 30	58, 74, 63	148, 115, 101	150, 80, 127
Fire	604

At 2:36, we stacked the pyramid to make a “teepee.” Here are the fire temperature measurements:

Time	Temperature (celsius)
2:51	790
2:54	893
2:56 (SMOTHERED the fire with sawdust)	813

The next day, we went to check out the results of smothering. The sawdust was gone. 3/15 of our pottery pieces had broken: 2 were Margie and Eliot’s non-bisque fired pottery. The third was Hali’a’s.

The middle of the fire was 19 degrees celsius, and the temperature of the regular ground was 13 degrees celsius.

Each piece of pottery stayed the same weight, except for Dane’s, which went up one gram each. Margie and Eliot tried to rebuild their pieces, and their weights were 176 and 141 grams, respectfully. We had 33 grams of miscellaneous broken pottery pieces left over.