Fig. 1
This is a simple calorimeter with an oxygen input to let the nuts burn totally.
Experimental data
Results chart
Chart 1
Energy calculations
Almont
- Energy= 1*4.18*9
- Energy= 37.62 KJ
Cashew
- Energy= 1.3*4.18*15
- Energy= 81.51 KJ
Peanut
- Energy= 0.55*4.18*4.8
- Energy= 11.04 KJ
Content of each nut
Chart 2
Energy data graph
Graph 1
This graph show the amount of energy that each of the three nuts as store on it.
Nuts content graph
Graph 2
This graph shows the content of proteins, carbohydrates and lipids on each nut
Energy store to content graph
Graph 4
This graph shows the relation between the different contents of the nuts and the energy produces because of them.
Atomic structure of the proteins
Fig. 1
Atomic structure of the hydrocarbons
Fig. 2
Atomic structure of the Lipids
Fig. 3
The R1, R2 and R3 part of the lipid that has a long chain of hydrocarbons. These chains can have 10 to 20 carbons on them.
Procedure evaluation
The experiment came out fine but as in any experiment there were some errors when making it. The starting temperature was never the same sometimes it was 32°C or 22°C this creates some error in the calculation for the energy. Some of the heat produced by the nut escaped from the apparatus when they were burning, this affected the calculations slightly. The heat of the nuts escaped from the apparatus because there were some openings on it. There was no time to calculate the heat resistance of the apparatus. Some of the carbon in the nuts did not totally burn it flu away from the calorimeter with the are currents of the room. It would be very hard to measure a fix mass for the nuts that are going to be use for the experiment because the size of the nuts is very different, some of the nutrients would be lost if the guts were to be granule. Some of the water could have evaporated when doing the experiment. Some of the heat of the nuts got lost from the moment that they were light in the Bunsen burner and put under the calorimeter. The quantities of proteins, carbohydrates and lipids that were use as the values for the nuts, were the average that the packets were they came had and they are not very accurate.
Possible improvement for the experiment
An easy way of resolving many of the problems would be to use a bomb calorimeter (Fig. 4) because no heat would escape carbon would be lost at any moment of the experiment. The nuts could be analyzed to see what’s the most possible accurate amounts of proteins, hydrocarbons and lipids the nuts have. But its impossible to tell what’s the accurate content of the nuts that you are going to use for the experiment is going to be. To have the same starting temperature for each of the nuts would also make the experiment more accurate. To have more time and more nuts to analyze would give more results and the conclusion for the experiment would be better supported. To use the same amount of nut for each of the experiment would decrease the range of error of the experiment a lot.
Conclusion
The more carbon-hydrogen bonds that the energy storage the nuts have the more energy that they will have. The lipids are the structure that has more carbon-hydrogen bonds so its understandable that the nut that has more lipids would be the one that will produce more energy when burn. The longer the molecule is the more energy that it will produce when the bonds are burn because the energy that maintained the molecule together is release. The forces that existed between molecules are also broken for example in the proteins the hydrogen bonds that are the strongest intermolecular forces are broken that energy is release. This is why the nut they have mainly lipids inside because is the best way to store energy and the nut are the seeds of the plant, so when the seed starts to germinate it use the lipids and the other contents of the nut for energy to grow until the riche the nutrient of the ground to create food from photosynthesis
