February 2nd, 2017

Hannah, Quincy,
Kealey, Desirae

Surviving in The Winter: Most Effective Fire Starters

Abstract
To start a fire in the backcountry you must have the most effective fire starter. How does the type
of material in a fire starter affect the peak temperature and the time it takes to burn out? We
would burn the fire starters and record the max temperature and burning time. We discovered
that our prediction was fairly accurate.

Introduction
We are interested in this because when going out into the backcountry you bring firestarters with
you in case of an emergency, and it is important to have the most effective one with you. We
were trying to figure out what fire starter burns the hottest and burns the longest. We had to
taking into consideration the flammability (is how easily something will burn or
ignite-schevaran.com) of each material. That includes specific heat (the heat required to raise the
temperature of the unit mass of a given substance by a given amount-hyperphysics.phy) and
surface area. The specific heat of both wood and cardboard and wood is 2400 and the specific
heat of cotton is

1300 - 1500 (J/kgoC)

Sources:
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/specific-heat-capacity-d_391.html
http://www.pslc.ws/fire/flamable/index.htm

Question: How does the type of material in a fire starter affect the peak temperature and the time
it takes to burn out?

Hypothesis: If the flammability in the different materials affects the peak temperature, then we
believe the cotton will burn at the hottest temperature, because while all three are made up of
organic compounds, cotton has the greatest surface area.
Methods and materials: The method we took while testing this experiment was fairly simple
since we were lighting fire starters. The first step we did was to melt the wax with the different
material inside it.We waited overnight for the wax to cool off, once the wax dried we cut the wax
in half and measured the mass of the fire starters to make sure they where all the same. Next we
went outside and lit the fire starters and collected the data which was the amount of heat each of
the fire starters made. After we got the data we lit the other half of the fire starters and collected
the time it takes for the fire to go out. Finally we came with a conclusion on which fire starter
worked best. The materials we used was wax, wood shavings, cardboard, and cotton. The
materials we used to collect the data was a temperature probe and our phones to collect the time.

Pictures:

In this picture, Quincy is measuring the

temperature of the wood shavings fire starter.

In this picture, we are measuring the cardboard

fire starter.
These are the fire starters before we melted them.

This is a picture of us measuring the mass

of the fire starters.
Results: At the end of our lab, we concluded that cotton was the most effective fire starter, due to
the fact that it produced the most heat. The hottest point of the cotton ball fire starter was 722
degrees celsius, the cardboard at 701, and the wood shavings at 683. We cut all of the fire
starters to 15 grams. Then we cut them to 10 grams and timed how long they would burn for.
The cotton lasted for 12 minutes and 23 seconds, the cardboard lasted for 6 minutes and 19
seconds, and 4 minutes and 45 seconds for wood shavings
Discussion: We came into this project wanting to figure out the best method for a fire starter. We
wanted to figure out the best material to use in a easy homemade fire starter, so we would be
prepared in the backcountry. The different materials we used were wood, cotton and cardboard.
The wax we used was from tea light candles. Our hypothesis was that the cotton fire starter
would burn the hottest and the longest. If you look at the data above, the results show the
obvious lead the cotton took in heat and time. We originally thought the cotton would come first
and the other two very close behind, because all three materials are made up of organic
compounds. When we did the experiment, we were surprised in the results. Not only did the
cotton have a much hotter peak temperature, the time it took to burn out, was double the other
two.