Viscosity of Oils.

Viscosity of oils. (Planning)

The runniness of oils.

Aim

I am going to find out the viscosity of each of the 5 sample oils by testing them to investigate my experiment.

Prediction

I think the order in which the oils will be the most viscous in and the runniness of each of them, will prove to me the viscosity of the oils. I think the most runny oil will be hexane and the least viscous as well because the numbers of hydrocarbons in it are less, being the thinnest oil from the other 4, I predict that hexane is the most runny oil.

I think hexane is the most runny oil because it is the thinnest oil of all and also because all oils come from the death and decay of plants and animals, covered up by layers of mud and sand at high temperatures, which formed fossil fuels such as crude oil. I think crude oil has been split up to make it useful. It is a mixture of substances, most of which are different sized hydrocarbon molecules containing hydrogen and carbon. Hydrocarbons such as oil as basically fuels. I think the bigger and longer the molecules, the less runny the oil is but also in the long chain molecules, as the size of the hydrocarbon molecule increases it gets more viscous (doesn’t flow so easily), so I predict that the most viscous oil will be hexadecane from the other 4 oils. I think hexadecane is the less runniest (most viscous) because as longer the chain length the more viscous it is. The diagram below shows the hydrocarbon of hexadecane: C12 H26

I also think that viscosity is proportional to chain lengths because as the chain gets longer the more viscous the oil becomes, so I think that shorter chain lengths are more runny as to the theory of viscosity is proportional to chain lengths.

Another thing that makes me think that hexane is the runniest is because all hydrocarbons are bonded together, they share electrons, all of these alkanes have a c-c single bonds, they are made up of chains of carbon atoms with single covalent bonds between them.

Example of one natural gas with it’s formulae: ...

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Example of one natural gas with it’s formulae: Methane: CH4

The ways in which these hydrocarbons are bonded have the formulae: Cn H2n+2 from which we can know that they are alkanes and can find out the formulae of everyone of them.

Example of one oil, lets see decane.

Decane has 10 carbon atoms to find out the formulae, we will use the main formulae:

Cn H2n+2 C10 H2 10 + 2

=C 10 H 22

So, I think the bonding of these electrons can prove that how much viscous each of them are?

PLANNING

Method

The diagram above shows my experiment set up. The equipment below are the ones I used in my experiment.

Apparatus list:

5 Sample Oil
A piece of glass
A pipette
A ruler
A marker
A square block
A stopclock

I started the experiment by first making sure that all my equipment were ready in place and then I gently took the piece of glass and marked on it 5cm with a marker and a block which was square and had an angle of 90 degrees when it was set up with the piece of glass and after that I took a pipette and put a type of oil on the glass to find out the result. I made my experiment a fair test, to do this I used the same amount of oil (1 drop)every time with all the 5 oils. I also kept the distance and the angle same in the investigation. I took measurements accurately and made my experiment reliable by repeating the results twice and then finding the average to plot the graph.

PRELIMINARY WORK

In my experiment I used specific amount of oil because I thought if I drop more than one drop of oil on the glass from the pipette than the experiment wouldn’t remain fair and also if I would have kept different distances for the oil to travel than the measurement which I would have got Would not be accurate.

SAFETY

The safe use of apparatus in my experiment was the first priority but as to my investigation there were no out-standing precautions that I had to take in my experiment.

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