experiments
In order to determine if using recycled t-shirt material would work as a lamp shade, I conducted an experiment into the transparency of the material as it was stretched across a light box. The tshirt I chose was originally a fruit of the loom heavy T. This shirt was 195gsm and made from 100% cotton. It was heavily worn at work for 5 months, so is a good example of a typical waste t-shirt. This was far from a scientific experiment, as I did not have a light meter, so had to create one myself. This was done by using an LDR, set into a paper cone (party hat) with a 5 output from an arduino. The effective resolution of this could be tuned by changing values of a pulldown resistor in the circuit. (see tinkercad diagram). For the level of light I was working with, 100kOhm would
have worked best resistor value. However I only had access to an old radio, within which I cobbled together a sting of assorted resistors that totalled 80kOhm. If I was to repeat this I’d either use a proper data logger with a light meter or a better home-made one.
been textile recycled. The flags were then stretched over the opening of the lightbox and held at no tension for 5 seconds, then stretched over 5 seconds until it was finally held at maximum tension for a further 5 seconds.
This light meter wasn’t calibrated to a lux value, however was accurate to itself so I can compare and contrast my results to a known base value. This stream of information updated every 250ms, and I was able to feed the date into excel and record a 15s interval. From this I was able to generate the graphs shown on the next page. I was looking at the difference in transparency of t-shirt transparency when stretched in different orientations. To do this, small sample flags were made from an old work tshirt that would have otherwise
the logging setup https://www.fruitoftheloom.eu/shop/heavy-t/
the process of making the test equipment
sacrificial work tshirt
So What?
What Now?
Conducted an experiment into the transparency of cotton
Analyse results
Built a light-meter that I can use in future
Possibly study more materials
Decide on the future of the project
