Colorado Potters Guild Website is Finished
Colorado Potters Guild Screen Shot
WHEW, and let me just let out one more extended audible wheeewwwwwwwwwwww for my own benefit. I finally finished the Colorado Potters Guild website today – what a relief! I feel like I can finally get on with my life and I’m sure my family will be happier too since I will no longer be multi tasking every single minute of the day. Go ahead – head on over and take a looksie.
The good news about building a site from scratch is that I benefited from the knowledge I gained from all the mistakes I made on my own site. The bad news is that now I have to fix a lot of stuff on my own site – including my – the archive search is broken, among other things. It’s all good though because my own site isn’t nearly as pressing as the Potter’s Guild site. I’m going to make a list and tackle one or two items a day which will eventually get the job done.
More good news to share – my husband was spared the ax at work which is a relief and now we are making a few plans. I have decided to attend my first ever NCECA conference (National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts for you non clay readers) taking place April 8 – 11th in Phoenix this year. I think the family is going to come along, but I’m not sure how much time we’re going to spend together. We have friends in Phoenix that we haven’t seen in awhile, including friends from high school and one of my husband’s college buds and former room mates.
We also renewed our passports recently and are planning to take a summer vacation. Hubby is trying to talk me into a European vacation, I’m still on the fence about where to go. I have to think of the dogs after all – one of them fasts whenever we leave for an extended period of time.
And finally, in regards to my last post about my daughter’s solar heat collector that she made for her school science fair – she won 2nd place overall for her school! Pretty cool if you ask me…. She was relieved because she didn’t want to go to District Science Fair (don’t ask me why, I never got a straight answer) and only the 1st place winner gets to go, but also pleased because she won a prize and was rewarded for all the hours she invested in the project. She was also happy because one of her best friends won 1st place which is cause for celebration. At any rate, we brought her project home and we’ve decided to do some more experiments on our own with her solar heat collectors. We saw some plans for ones with fans that are generated by mini solar photo voltaic panels – so we have some work to do. By the time it comes to make a larger version for me, we’ll be all set to go! I told you I was being a little selfish.
I’m signing off for the day to hit the studio for a tad and now that I’m finally finished with the CPG site, I’m going to install my Bamboo Fun Wacom tablet that I haven’t allowed myself to play with out of fear I would become too distracted. I made a couple of porcelain pendants the other day that I thought would be good canvases for some ceramic decals.
I hope to catch up with what everyone has been up to lately in the next week,
~Cynthia
Solar Heat Collector Part Deux
Solar Heat Collector
It’s science fair week at my daughter’s school and when she came up empty in regards to what she wanted to try making back in December, I suggested something close to my heart – solar energy. Yes – I was being just a little bit selfish when I suggested making a solar heat collector, but given our new administration’s embrace of alternative energies and the timing of the project, I thought it would be a good project to explore.
Check out the National Renewable Energy website for more kid’s science projects.
I figured it it worked, it would give me incentive to make a large scale one for my garage studio. The original plans I found back in the fall that used mostly recycled materials which called for drilling holes on the top and bottom of empty aluminum cans sounded too dangerous for an 11 year old to attempt making, so she researched different projects and watched several videos (thanks YouTube) and finally decided to make a solar heat collector that incorporated design elements from a few of the projects. Instead of aluminum cans to collect the heat, she used aluminum foil which she painted black.
I knew she needed to be able to make it herself with minimal help from me – I tell her all the time that I’ve already graduated from 5th grade and I have done my share of homework in my life time. This was her project and I’m so proud of her, and I was equally excited to see her discoveries! I did act as the official photographer in order to document her temperature readings.
She used recycled materials and built two boxes for less than $3.00 apiece – though we did purchase a Ryobi IR 001 Infrared Thermometer for $29.95 at Home Depot in order for her to take her temperature readings. I can’t find the tool on the Home Depot Site – but it’s the coolest new gadget and has uses outside of her science project. It’s billed as a tool to perform energy audits of one’s home and is good for -4° F to 600° F.
Click on any image to scroll through her photo album how she built her solar heat collector.
26 Photos
My daughter made 2 different solar heat collectors that were constructed exactly alike – the only difference is that she painted one of them black and left the other one unpainted with aluminum foil exposed. The unpainted one did produce heat, but not like the one painted black.
9 am temperature reading
12pm temperature readings
Yep – you’re seeing this correctly – at 12pm, when the sun was highest in the sky, her black painted box was registering a temperature of 165° F!
5pm temperature readings
You can see that by 5pm, when the sun had nearly set and the air temperature was in the 30′s, there was barely any difference between each of the boxes. In fact, at this time of day the temperature difference was negligent.
Pretty amazing, don’t you think? Free heat! There is a real limitation. The practically free heat collector doesn’t store heat – so it’s only really good as a supplemental heat source when the sun is shining.
Meanwhile, I actually spent some time in my studio today.
It felt good,
~Cynthia
