For our last class we completed two labs; the first involving the temperatures of water and oil when heated and the second involving the energy output from solar panels when lit. For the first lab we had one beaker filled with 80 milliliters of water and another with 80 milliliters of oil. The beakers were placed on a heater, which were adjusted to a specific degree. Once heated, we plugged the probes into the Labview program and then placed them in the liquids. From this generated data it was determined that water resulted in a higher temperature than oil, which was unexpected because of water’s increased time to heat as compared to oil. To get these results we used the heat energy equation ( H = CP*M*∆T ) as well as the mass density of water (1.00) and oil (0.92) and the specific heat of water (4.18) and oil (2.00). We received a total difference of 0.50 for water and 1.42 for oil and an energy calculation of 168.84 and 209.29 respectively. The percentage difference of these totaled 21.39%.

For the second lab we conducted, we determined the level of energy output from a small solar panel when placed under a light source. In this experiment we used a flashlight to adjust the height and intensity of the light. The panel was then attached to the Labview program, which gathered the voltages and recorded the results in excel. For the first three attempts we varied the height at 0″, 5″, and 10″, which resulted in 9.40, 0.61, and 0.57 averages respectively. From this we determined that the closer the light source was to the solar panel, the higher the intensity. For the next set we kept a steady distance of 5″, but changed a colored film over the light. Although the three colors used (yellow, blue, and red) resulted in similar averages (0.62, 0.60, and 0.61), this was similar to what we assumed in that the darkest color film, blue, would produce the lowest voltage. We did, however, think that there would be a greater variance than what was gathered.