Monday, August 16, 2010

What fabric burns the fastest?

Today we did an experiment looking at how quickly different fabrics burn. The experiment is relevant to our lives in terms of the safest fabrics to wear in relation to fire resistance. Last week we had looked at fabrics and how easy or hard they are to tear or rip and explored some of the properties of various fabrics.
We discovered today that fabric that had polyster or nylon often took the longest to burn but melted slowly and gave off toxic smelling black smoke and this would not be an ideal fabric to be wearing in the event of a fire. Silk was very hard to ignite and melted around the edges and quickly went out. Cotton burnt quickly but didn't melt. Flannelette burnt extremely quickly and we discussed that this fabric is often what children's pyjamas are made of. Acetate often used in lining of jackets and dresses burnt quickly and melted. We timed how long each piece of fabric took to burn and these results will be analysed in conjunction with our observations.
We had made a hypothesis before doing the experiment stating that "the finer the fabric the quicker it will burn"
Tomorrow we will write up the procedure, observations, results, graphs and conclusion as practice for doing our own investigations for the science fair.


  1. hi, im might do this for a school project, what did u put the fabric in?

  2. We made a cup shape out of tinfoil to burn the fabric in, and placed it on a baking tray. The experiment was done outside so as to stop smoke alarms going off. The cup shape stopped the wind putting out the flames.