Crucible is used to refer to a situation in which something is tested or a conflict takes place, often one which produces something new. a system in which ideas are tested in the crucible of party contention. a play by Arthur Miller which describes how innocent women were charged with being witches and cruelly punished by a court of law in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. This play was written in 1953 to show how similar the Salem Witch Trials were to McCarthyism. a container in which substances are heated to very high temperatures (crucibulum, from croiseul). Pot of clay or other refractory material, used from ancient times as a container for melting metals or other materials. Modern crucibles may be small laboratory utensils for conducting high-temperature chemical reactions and analyses, or large industrial vessels for melting and calcining metal, ore, or glass, and may be made of clay, graphite, porcelain, or a relatively infusible metal
A high temperature, pot-shaped container used to melt glass in furnaces or kilns
A vessel or melting pot, composed of some very refractory substance, as clay, graphite, platinum, and used for melting and calcining substances which require a strong degree of heat, as metals, ores, etc