Insulation Investigation

Prediction- I think the best insulator in this experiment will be the cotton wool.

Equipment-3 Large Beakers

                3 Small Beakers

                3 Thermometers

                1 Timer

                Cotton Wool

                Polystyrene

                Cork Bungs

Method- We firstly prepared the beakers by placing the cork bungs in the base of the large beaker and placing on top of the cork bungs the smaller beakers. We then around the sides of two of the beakers put polystyrene in one and cotton wool in another firmly pushing together to try and create no gaps. We then filled the smaller beakers with the same amount of boiling water and took our first temperature reading. We placed over the top of each of the three beakers and took temperature readings from each of them after 1 minute for a period of 15 minutes.

Table of Results-

My Results                                Other Group’ Results

In my results the air filled gap had a difference of 23 oC the polystyrene gap had a difference of 19 oC and the cotton wool filled gap had a difference of 16 oC.

The other groups results the air filled gap had a difference of 21 oC the polystyrene filled gap had a difference of 19 oC and the cotton wool filled gap 17oC had a difference of

Graph- See Graph Paper

Conclusion- As you can see from the previous tables of results and graph that cotton wool was the best at insulating the heat therefore having the lesser difference. Due to the proof of these results my prediction was correct as I predicted the cotton wool would be the best insulator. I think the reason why the cotton wool was the best insulator was because we could push together the cotton wool easiest out of the three materials down the gap to fill in all the gap, hence, becoming the best insulator by letting out the less heat.