Hypothesis.
As carbon dioxide is classed as a greenhouse gas, I would expect the temperature in the bottle filled with carbon dioxide to be warmer than the one filled with regular air and to cool down slower.
Procedure.
1. Using limestone and acid, produce carbon dioxide and collect it in a bottle. Secure the lid on tightly and insert a temperature probe through the lid.
2. In another bottle, insert another temperature probe, ensuring that there is only ‘normal’ air in it.
3. Record the temperature using a log it system on the computer.
4. Light a lamp underneath the two bottles and record the temperature for ten minutes.
5. Turn the lamp off and continue recording for a further 10 minutes.
Analysis.
This graph shows that both carbon dioxide and air heat up the same amount when exposed to a small amount of heat. When the lamp is turned off, there is a sharp drop in heat in both bottles, although the carbon dioxide one retains heat for ___ minutes longer. This is because carbon dioxide is a bigger molecule, and when it warms up, there are more electrons that are excited. The electrons take longer to loose the energy they have gained. This means that the molecule will stay warmer for longer. For this experiment, the difference was so small between the normal air and the carbon dioxide; it doesn’t reflect the real life situation.
Evaluation.
This experiment didn’t work particularly well; it didn’t prove the connection between carbon dioxide and global warming, as the graph doesn’t have a significant difference between the air and Carbon dioxide temperatures. This may have been because we only left the light on for 10 minutes. This doesn’t represent the world outside, where the sun is shining for at least 16 hours per day in the summer time in Britain, also the lamp only gives off infra red radiation, so is not like the light coming from the sun into the atmosphere. There is an anomaly in my results, in the ___th minute, we moved the bottles down, closer to the lamp. This caused the lamp to touch the bottle for a slight second and it made the temperature change suddenly.
If I were to do this again, I would keep the lamp on for a longer period of time, for example 2 hours, then turn the lamp off for 2 hours. There would be a wider variety of results from this, which may prove the connection between carbon dioxide and global warming.
