Specific Heat Experiment

A concept that is still difficult for me to grasp is specific heat, and I thought this project would be a perfect place to start in order to comprehend the concept at hand. The specific of heat water is 1 calorie per gram degrees Celsius, but with that in mind can’t we test different solid materials to find their specific heat as well?

How would we perform such a task? By submerging them in hot water. Think about it. We have household items such as aluminum, copper (pennies), iron (Screws), and plastic. Those will be our four manipulating variables. We’ll submerge all of them into 100 grams of water at 30 degrees Celsius and adjust the temperature on a hot plate to 70 degrees Celsius. We’ll check the temperature of the water after it has been raised, and utilize that to find the calories taken to change the temperature of that specific solid metal. An example is written below taken from this website to further display this experiment.

• Aluminum mass (grams) à Heat it in hot water (100 grams of water @ 20 degrees celsius) à Adjust temperature to 70 degrees Celsius à temperature raised to 24.8 degrees Celsius
  • How many calories did this take?
  • Since it takes 1 calories to change the temperature of 1 gram of water 1 degrees Celsius, it takes 480 Calories to heat 100 grams of water 4.8 degrees Celsius.

The Greenhouse Effect

This experiment deals with the concept of the greenhouse gasses that are harmful for our environment due to aspects such as an increase in natural disasters, organisms extinctions, sea levels rising, climate change, and overall apprehension in terms of our future on this planet, and if our grandchildren will be able to survive on it. The main component of Greenhouse Gas Emissions is CO2 or also known as Carbon Dioxide.

For this experiment there will be two containers. One being the control and the other being one filled with Carbon Dioxide to emphasize climate change, and what an impact it has on our environment. The containers will symbolize the environment, so although container one which is the control will not have any added gasses to it, except the addition of water, container 2 will have baking soda in addition to the same amount of water utilized in container 1. They will both be sealed under a light source, which symbolizes the sun.

Why is it important to make sure each container is the same except for the addition of CO2? Because if the Carbon Dioxide is not the only thing that is equivalent within the two containers than the change in temperature (because there will be thermometers in each container) may be different (more or less) due to another factor that wasn’t supposed to be a manipulating variable.

 

Kinetic Energy experiment

This is pretty self-explanatory, but using four items measure the potential and kinetic energy at the beginning and end of four different balls on the same ramp. The manipulative variables would be the balls, and the thing that would change as a result of it is the kinetic and potential energy. The Energy’s would be dependent on the mass’s used. You can calculate this by these two formulas.

Potential Energy is mgh and Kinetic Energy is 1/2mv^2. This experiment seems way too simple, thus why I don’t want to utilize this design considering it lacks complexity, which wouldn’t make my group feel challenged in any way.

 

Conclusion

I feel like the most beneficial learning experience would be the first experiment considering it’s a topic that is still difficult for many individual’s in the class to understand and this would shed some informative light on the top