The Factor that Effect the Temperature of Water Heated by a Small Immersion Heater.

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The Factor that Effect the Temperature of Water Heated by a Small Immersion Heater

Aim / Task:  

    I am investigating, to find out what factors effects the temperature of water when heated by a small immersion heater under water.

Preliminary Work

    The factors that I will vary are the volume of the water as we can see from this how the more the water there is, the less the temperature rises and when there is less water the temperature rises quicker. So then after that I could vary the time so we can see what happens over a longer time, when there is more water. So I will monitor the temperature to see how quickly or slowly the experiment goes.

    For this experiment I will be using an immersion heater, which will be under water. I also will have a measuring cylinder, which will be where the water and the heater will go. The heater will be connected to a circuit and a 12-volt power supply with ammeters and voltmeters, which can be seen in the diagram. There are some safety things such as; the immersion heater should be under water all the time, because then the heater starts to give off lots of smoke. Also the circuit must be set up right or it will short circuit and blow the fuses.

   

  So what I would do is to get the right amount of water and then get my stopwatch ready and put the immersion heater in. Next I would take the temp of the water at the start. Then I would put the power on and wait till the 3 mins were up and take the temperature and find the difference and start again with a different volume of water until all the volumes were done.

Experimental Plan

  The key factors in my experiment are volume of water and the time the temperature of the room. I will control time by keeping it the same and the room temperature I cannot control but it should stay consent, as there are no big fluctuation in the room temperature. The volume, I control as I have to change it have a factor that I will vary. I will observe the temperature rising on the thermometer and at the end of 3 mins I will measure the change in temperature between the start and the end. Problem found was, where are you going to put the thermometer to measure the heat. As the immersion heater cannot go all the way to the bottom then water will be mostly heated at the top, as the convection currents will mean that this happens. So we can see that there will be very little change in temperature if the thermometer is on the bottom. The equipment used was all accurate but the problem of accuracy is with the person doing the experiment, because must of the time it is human error and not the equipment.

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   I am doing an observation from 40ml of water to 100ml and doing one every 10ml on the way. I am not doing one below 40 because the immersion heater will be out of the water and so will not be immersed. So I will get 6 results, which will give me a good accurate graph of results. My readings will be taken after 3 mins, where I can then see what the temperature difference is. I will ensure the results are reliable by repeating the experiment and so getting and average result and so more reliable results.

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