Fair Test: When conducting this experiment, I plan to place the metals on separate heatproof mats because they are poor conductors and this will reduce heat loss. I will put them on separate heatproof mats so that none of the metals will gain heat from the last experiment on the mat. This will also make it more of a fair test because they will all be on the same type of surface. I will also make sure all of the metals are at the same temperature before the test to make sure it is a fair test.
Apparatus List:
A 50-Watt Electric Emersion Heater
A Thermometer
Safety Precautions: The dangers that could occur during this experiment are; there is a small chance of being burnt by the metal if it gets to hot, to prevent this we will ensure that enough time is given for the metal to cool down after the experiment before the metal is touched. The second danger is of electrocution, we will make sure before the experiment begins that all the electrical equipment is in good and working order and is safe.
Prediction: I predict the higher the density of the metal the longer it will take to heat up and the lower the density the quicker it will heat up. I think this because the denser a metal the more atoms it has so therefore there is more atoms to heat up meaning a denser metal is slower to gain heat than a less dense metal because it has more atoms. The densest of the metals is copper; followed by iron then the least dense is aluminium.
Heating Metals Results Table
Conclusion
From my results I can conclude that the lower the density the higher the rate of conductivity. I can see this because the lower density metals like Aluminium and Iron gained heat at a faster rate than the highest density metal copper. I can see this by looking at the curve of the graph; the lower density metals have a steeper curve than the curve of the copper showing that they gained heat a lot faster meaning the lower density metals were better conductors.
The main trend of the graph is an un-smooth upward curve this shows that the metal isn’t heating up at a steady, although the aluminium curve is quite smooth. This shows again that aluminium is a better conductor than iron and copper both of which have a higher density.
The results support my conclusion because I predicted that the lower the density the quicker it would take to heat up and the higher the density the slower it would take, as I have said this is what we got from our results.
Evaluation
My method was effective because it gave us very accurate results, was relatively safe and was very easy to carry out. We got no anomalous results which also shows it was a very effective method.
To improve our experiment we could have recorded for longer amount of time, we could have used a digital thermometer this would have made our results perfectly correct. Future work could involve using other types of metals, using different weights of metals or using an electric emersion heater of a higher wattage.
