Determine the best insulator from a range of materials.

Apparatus

Tin cans, Insulating materials, Kettle, Water, Elastic bands, Polystyrene Lids, Stopwatch

Method:

1. Wrap one layer of one type of material around a can and use an elastic band to secure it. Do this to all four types of materials and leave one can without any material wrapped around it.
2. Boil water in kettle.
3. Fill each can with boiling water and put a polystyrene lid on with a thermometer through the hole in the middle.
4. Start the stopwatch.
5. Take the temperature each minute for 15 minutes and record it in a table.

Fair Test And Number Of Readings

I made my experiment fair by using the exact same type of equipment and wrapping the same amount of layers of material around the can. We repeated the experiment to get another set of results to compare and get an average.

Safety

• Take care when handling boiling/very hot water in tin can.

Results

1st Table Of Results:

2nd Table Of Results

Conclusion

I found that overall the acrylic fluff was the best insulator has the average temperature drop from both sets of results was the smallest. This agrees with my prediction that it would be the best insulator because it traps air around the can and air is a good insulator because the particles in air are very spaced out so heat energy cannot be transferred to the surrounding air of the can. Thus keeping the can warmer for longer.

I also found that Polystyrene was a very bad insulator because it’s average temperature drop was only 0.5 degree smaller than the can where no insulation had been used. I think this is because polystyrene is a solid therefore it’s particles are tightly packed together. This allows for heat energy to be transferred to the surroundings by conduction where heat energy makes the particles vibrate. This causes a chain affect across the solid until the heat energy is at the outside of the solid and been transferred to the surroundings.

Evaluation

I think my investigation went well and we got a good set of results, which were the results I expected which I stated in my prediction, which was that the Acrylic fluff would be the best insulator and the polystyrene would be the worst insulator. I think to take our investigation further we could continue it for longer until the temperature stops dropping. This would give us a more complete set of results and we would be able to draw better conclusions from it. However has can be seen on the graph there were a few anomalous results. I think I could have improved the accuracy of our results by using a digital thermometer to get exact temperature measurements. Another way to improve the accuracy of my results would be to make sure the starting temperature was the same or has near as possible to each other because the rate of cooling may change has the water cools down.