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 |
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 |
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.
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