Combustion of Alcohol.

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Combustion of Alcohol

Introduction:

This experiment is based on the combustion of alcohols. In alcohol there are different amounts of carbon. We will be burning the alcohols to see weather the amount of carbon affects the energy given out. Combustion is basically a reaction of a fuel with oxygen creating heat. I know that the reactions in this experiment will be exothermic because they will give out heat. Therefore energy is produced by the reaction.

Aim:

To find out weather the amount of carbon in alcohols affect the amount of energy given out when the alcohol is burnt. We will see how much it heats up water and then we will figure out the amount of energy produced then how much energy produced per mole.  The alcohols that I will be using will be: propan-1-ol, butan-1-ol, ethan-1-ol, methan-1-ol and pentan-1-ol.

Prediction:

        I predict that the more carbon in an alcohol then the more energy released. I believe this because the alcohol with more carbon means that more bonds have to be broken, this would require more energy to break the many bonds whereas, if there were less carbons then not as much energy is needed because there are less bonds to break. I also used the results of my preliminary work (below) to give me an idea of what might happen. I also used the result from my preliminary work to see how I would set out the results by using the three equations.

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Preliminary Work:

We did the preliminary work as a trial to see what factors should be changed and we were trying to find the factors that would give us accurate results. The preliminary work also gave us the chance to try our equations to figures out energy per mole. Our results were complete so we were able to do this.

After testing one of the alcohols to burn for 6 minutes with the water 8cm above the surface. We had decided to do some changes to the factors. We decided to change the height from 8cm above ...

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