Experiment
Pictures
For this experiment, you will need a number of different products. You will need
a half of a yard of nylon polyester and cotton. You will also need three pie
tins each seven and three-eighths by seven and three-eighths by one and
five-sixteenths.
Next, you will need a minimum of thirty-two matches for each fabric (for best
results, use fireplace matches). You will need plastic sandwich bags to hold the
remains of the individual fabrics used in the different experiments. Of course,
you will need safety equipment when handling fire. When doing this experiment,
we recommend adult supervision for children under the age of eighteen years old.
During the experiment, we had a fire extinguisher near by as well as running
water that was accessible throughout the experiment to successfully ensure our
safety.
To conduct this experiment, the first step is to prepare the fabric by carefully
cutting the different fabrics into seven and three-eighth inches by one and
five-sixteenth inch squares. The second step to this experiment is carefully
preparing all of the pie tins and setting up the safety equipment. Then, we made
are charts to record the odor, fire rate, flame temperature and so on for each
experiment. In the first few tests, we used small matches to light the fabric on
fire, then, we realized that it was safer if we used longer, and longer-lasting
matches instead. We eventually tried to lift the fabric while beginning the
burning process since there were really high wind conditions and the matches
continuously burned out before touching the fabric. On day two of the
experiment, we tested and recorded the effects of
the fire on Nylon and Polyester (although on day one, we did do a few of those
fabric tests as well as cotton fabric tests). These steps were repeated 10 times
for each fabric for better results. The weather and wind did play a huge role in
these experiments but we later found ways to easily avoid it.