Last week was our team’s first “test run” of the experiment we will be doing. Just as a reminder to everyone, we are focusing on insulation. We have 4 identical glass Snapple bottles, and we are wrapping them in different materials to determine which serves as the best form of insulation. Here is a step-by-step of our “rough draft” of the experiment…
Materials:
4 identical glass Snapple bottles
Tinfoil ; Styrofoam ; Cardboard ; (the 4th Snapple bottle will remain unwrapped)
1 hot-plate
2 temperature probes
1- First, begin wrapping your Snapple bottles. The entire bottle should be covered except for the bottom and the top. Use masking tape to secure the materials onto the bottles.
2- Fill up a large pitcher with room-temperature sink water. Then, use a funnel to fill each of the 4 Snapple bottles. It is important not to get any water on the outside of the bottles.
3- Use 4 small pieces of tinfoil to wrap the top of each bottle tightly. Then, use a pen or pencil to poke a small hole into the foil.
4-Adjust your computer program to record temperature readings every 20 seconds for a duration of 5 minutes (15 readings).
Computer set to 20-second interval temperature readings
5- Turn the hot-plate on to level 5, and give it 5 minutes to heat up.
6- Insert the two temperature probes through the holes you poked on the plain glass bottle and the bottle wrapped in foil, and place the two bottles on the hot plate.
Plain glass bottle and foil-wrapped bottle
7- Open excel so that recordings will be uploaded. Press start on your computer to initiate the temperature readings.
Temperatures being recorded.
8- After the 5 minutes is up, switch the probes to the cardboard-wrapped bottle and the styrofoam-wrapped bottle. Repeat steps.
Cardboard and Styrofoam-wrapped Snapple bottles.
9- Make conclusions on which material serves as the best form of insulation. Whichever bottle took the longest to heat will be the winner. To find this, determine which bottle had the least change over time.
—> Again, this was just our first run. We will probably do this one or two more times for practice. Our final experiment will end with the students creating their own insulated bottle with the use of different materials. However, we haven’t exactly decided how we will do that yet, so I did not include it on the outline for now. Hopefully by next week we will know exactly how our experiment will be conducted.