Abstract By Lawrence B. |
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The name of my science project is “Which Adobe Brick Will Last?” I wonder how some buildings made of adobe brincks are standing in our village. What did Pueblo people use to make buildings durable and last this long? I decided to experiment and place various objects in the mud just to see what happens. The question I have is “What type of material will hold the adobe brick together the best.” My purpose is “I wanted to find out which type of material will hold the adobe mixture together and will my bricks last during rainy season.” My hypothesis is “I think the adobe brick mixed with straws will hold the adobe mixture together because it has been used for years.” Other materials used are plastic bags, chicken wire, and rocks. The materials I used to make the adobe bricks were “a wooden box, a bucket, straw, rocks, chicken wire, a plastic bag (Wal-Mart bag), adobe mud, and a plywood board.” My procedure went like this: I gathered all my materials, needed to perform my experiment. I build a wooden frame so I could pour the mud into it. I made the mud mixture using my materials. I added one out of the four of my materials to the mud. After added that material I placed the mud in the square wooden box. I placed it on a plywood board for it to dry. After that I repeated one through six again for all the other materials I had. It took five days for the adobes to dry. After drying, each brick was soaked in fast moving water all at the same time. When they are soaking, I timed them to see which one lasted the longer. My results went like this; the straw lasted for fifteen minutes, the plastic Wal-Mart bag lasted ten minutes, the rocks lasted for six minutes, and the chicken wire lasted for four minutes. This graph shows how long each adobe brick lasted through fast moving water that is being sprayed on it. The adobe brick with the straw lasted fifteen minutes, the next brick with a plastic bag lasted ten minutes, the brick with rocks lasted six minutes, and the last one with chicken wire lasted four minutes. In conclusion, my hypothesis was right because the adobe bricks made with straw lasted the longest than the other bricks. This has been the way the Pueblo Indians made their adobe homes made adobe mixture of straw. It was gratifying to know our ancestors were pretty intelligent and they must have experimented the same way as I did to investigate how to make their homes durable. In the future, I will make sure everything I can construct to last and using adobe mixture with straw confirms that idea…… |
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