To make this a fair test I will have to do the following; I will keep the volume of water the same. I will wrap the beaker with Corrugated Cardboard in the same way each time because some ways can affect the heat loss more than others. I will place the thermometer in the beaker at the same place each time. I will have to try and make sure that the starting temperature is always the same and be exact on the timing as well.
Method: We have chosen 4 different glassware, which have to have different surface areas. See below
We had to either measure the diameter or circumference of the four different glassware which will calculate to the surface area. Then we got a measuring cylinder to measure the volume of the water. We first measured the boiling water for the small beaker because the reason why we chosen 100ml was because the small beaker could only hold it, but we had to make sure that the water will cover the bottom of the thermometer bulb for the rest of the glassware. We then had to insulate the glassware because to make the heat loss from the sides and bottom as little as possible. For the insulator we chosen Corrugated Cardboard there isn’t specific why we had chosen that.
We tried to get the starting temperature the same, but it was really hard to. Most of our temperatures were approximately 1 to 19 degrees away from each other, which is quite bad. In other words wasn’t really a fair test. We tried to make it as accurate as we could, bit it was hard to.
We decide to leave it for 9 minutes, but we are going to check the temperature every minute. We repeated this experiment 3 times. One of the experiments we did it by ourselves without using the laptop to do the data logging. The second experiment we used the laptop for the medium beaker and the small beaker to do the data logging. The third experiment we used the laptop for the large beaker and the conical flask to do the data logging.
My Prediction: I predict that the largest beaker that the heat loss will be the greatest and in the smallest beaker the heat loss will be the smallest when insulated. This is because more surface area is present and more particles in contact.
Tables of Results
Experiment 1
Experiment 2
Experiment 3:
Conclusion: My conclusion is that during this experiment which we repeated three times is that the slower rate of fall in temperature is noted in the case if water under insulated conditions. The insulation reduces the rate of heat loss. My prediction did fit in quite well with the experiment which we did without using the data logging on the laptops because it didn’t go right for us.
Evaluation: My method was a sensible way of testing my prediction because I started at normal conditions and followed instructions clearly. My results as I said before weren’t really reliable because the data logging didn’t really work and when we did it by ourselves we didn’t exactly checked the temperature dead on every minutes so that could of affected the temperature and the results at the end of the 3 experiments. Our data logging didn’t work, so we had to use other people’s results. The reason why ours didn’t work is because the temperature wasn’t high enough to work properly. I could have done the three experiments in controlled conditions i.e. in the group we should have worked more as a team than individuals because we could have made the results even more reliable as they were. If I repeated this experiment again I probably would have taken an average of all the temperatures for accuracy. To make it a fair test, I would try harder to keep the starting temperature the same; also the thermometer should not touch the glass; otherwise it will be measuring the temperature of the glass, not the water and stirring the water would allow an average temperature to be recorded, not a local temperature.
