Investigate whether the huddling behaviour of the emperor penguins helps to conserve heat?

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Leanne Jones R11

Task:

Investigate in to whether the huddling behaviour of the emperor penguins helps to conserve heat?

Introduction/ background

I am going to investigate if penguins huddling together help them keep the body temperature up. As the emperor penguins have small feet, wings, head and a relatively small surface area great for conserving heat, they also have a thick layer of fat underneath their skin for insulation also their feather helps to insulate, they are also are warm blooded. All these are great for the cold conditions that are in the Antarctic.

 Penguins have to survive extreme conditions the temperature in the Antarctica; the temperature has been down to –88.3 ºC, but is normally below are round about -40. The wind has also been as fast as 200 mph.

  When a penguin breed it goes about 180 mile in to the Antarctica ice where there is less precipitation and the weather condition are less extreme. So with all the ways in which the penguins are adapted to live in the weather condition it. They still go to some where with less extreme conditions as the males will spend a lot of time standing in a huddle.

 The heat will be transferred by radiation; Radiation is electromagnetic energy given off by all objects, which are above the temperature of 0 ºC. so as the penguin’s huddle they radiate heat to other penguins to keep each other warm.

Predictions

I think that when penguins huddle. They do it to keep warm. So I my experiment the more test tube together in a huddle the warm the water will stay. I think this because of the radiation given off the test tubes.

 Also the cooler that water goes the slower the temperature will go down. As the water is going down to room temperature.

Variables

In this experiment there are lots of variables;

The start temperature,

Amount of water in the test tube,

Number of test tube in the huddles,

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Size of test tubes,

The room temperature

Fair test

I must make sure that I only change 1 variable. I am only going to change the amount of test tubes in a huddle, as that is what I am investigating. I will also have to change the water but I will measure the amount of water that goes in to the test tube also must make the start temperature the same.

Preliminary tests

I have done a test to see what the best temperature to start the experiment off at. As I want to start the ...

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