Week 3 Group A Lab Data: Pottery

Introduction:

For this week’s pottery lab, my group (Group A) was tasked with creating our pottery with a temper that consisted of mostly gravel and sand, with only a very small amount of chaff. The exact and ideal proportions that our group tried to use was as follows: 500g clay, 80g sand, 19g gravel, 1g chaff. As you will no doubt notice in the data provided below, neither of us were able to perfectly meet these amounts, mostly due to losing some of the material on the table (and on the ground) as we tried to combine the temper with the clay.

Our Data:

Because we only had 2 members of our lab group this week, it is important to note that our data will not provide as good of a sample size as other groups’, however we hope our data still proves enlightening in this experiment to test which sorts of tempers will be best at allowing the pots to survive the firing process. More detailed information about each of our pots will be provided below each table.

Dimensions of finished pot (UPDATED AS OF 5/3/24)

	Original	After 1 day	Loss	After 1 week	Loss	Before firing	Loss	After firing	Total Loss
Weight	553g	505g	48g			471g	34g	385g	168g
Height	11cm	10.5cm	0.5cm			10.5cm	0cm	10.5cm	0.5cm
Diameter (rim)	5.5cm	5.5cm	0cm			5.5cm	0cm	5.5cm	0cm
Diameter (widest)	8.5cm	8.5cm	0cm			8cm	0.5cm	7.8cm	0.7cm
Wall section	1.19cm	1.19cm	0cm			1.19cm	0cm	1.033cm	0.157cm

Albert Bosler’s Pottery Data. Other than a loss of 48 grams in weight and 0.5 centimeters in height, Albert’s pot did not lose very much in the day between lab and class. Either because of the tempers we used that perhaps kept the pot together effectively or because of Albert’s expert craftsmanship, the first day of this pot’s life was a success.
5/3/24 Update: After firing the pot, Albert’s pot lost 86g of its weight, none of its height, none of its diameter at the rim, 0.2cm of its diameter at the widest, and 0.157cm of its wall section. Due to our pots having the least amount of chaff out of every group’s pots, we experienced more spalling than Group F, for instance, which had 6g of chaff.

	Original	After 1 day	Loss	After 1 week	Loss	Before firing	Loss	After firing	Total Loss
Weight	591g	540g	51g	489g	51g	489g	0g	360g	231g
Height	8.5cm	8cm	0.5cm	7.7cm	0.3cm	7.7cm	0cm	7.7cm	0.8cm
Diameter (rim)	8cm	7.5cm	0.5cm	7.5cm	0cm	7.5cm	0cm	7.5cm	0.5cm
Diameter (widest)	9.8cm	9cm	0.8cm	9cm	0cm	9cm	0cm	8.6cm	1.2cm
Wall section	12.8mm	12.4mm	0.4mm	12.4mm	0mm	12.4mm	0mm	12.2mm	0.6mm

Nicholas Spezia-Shwiff’s Pottery Data. My pot had a similar loss of around 51 grams in weight and 0.5 centimeters in height. Additionally, the pot’s diameter became a fair bit smaller (0.5 centimeters at rim and 0.8 centimeters at its widest), though whether this was because of our tempers or the way I constructed the pot remains to be seen. The wall section was also smaller, though given that it was only smaller by 0.4 millimeters, an extremely small amount, and the fact that I was confused on lab day about how to properly measure the wall section, I am not positive whether the wall section actually did shrink or whether it was a measurement error.

5/3/24 Update: After firing the pot, my pot lost 129g of its weight, none of its height, none of its diameter at the rim, 0.4cm of its diameter at the widest, and 0.2mm of its wall section. My pot had quite a bit of spalling that occurred at its lower section, with much of it breaking off (which accounts for much of the ultimate weight loss) of the pot. In addition to spalling, there is the question of placement to consider, and with my pot being sandwiched between two other pots, it is interesting to think about how much that impacted the overall results of the firing.

Week 3 Group A Lab Data: Pottery

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