Week 3: April 17, 2015

This is the third laboratory period of the group meeting. For this period, the group has gathered charcoal, plastic cups, cloth, coffee filters and multiple tools. For the collection vessel, questions that arise are "how much can it hold?", "does it have a flat bottom or should it be propped up?" and "is it fragile?"The objective in testing materials is that the group must test a minimum of three different materials, three different times. Additionally, the group will be measuring two different volumes of filter material used. First, using one Solo cup and a screwdriver, multiple small holes were made on the bottom of the cup. Then, large pieces of charcoal were placed in a plastic bag. A hammer was used to mash the charcoal into fine, thin pieces. In the simulation, charcoal will be made from scratch. What charcoal requires to be made is fire, firewood, and one container. The wood will be found from trees on the island, the fire would be made with either wood from the island, or a lighter could be found on the crashed plane. The more specific steps on how to make charcoal from scratch follows on a different blog post. So, after the charcoal was mashed into fine pieces, it was placed in the Solo cup with holes in it. The fill line of charcoal was also recorded, this will later be more finely measured and will serve as one of two different volumes of filter material. Water was poured through the "charcoal filter" three different times. Observations were recorded and an excel chart will be created as follows this post. The other filtration material that was tested during this period was the cloth. A basic T-shirt was cut into small squares, and lined along the bottom of a different cup, also marked with holes at the bottom. This filter was tested three different times as well, and was recorded as only one lining of cloth (which will be one of two different 'volumes' of filtration, as two layers will have a thicker volume). These were recorded and tested.