Our final project in Contemporary Science & Innovation was a demonstration of the greenhouse effect. Our experiment was conducted by placing three glass mason jars next to each other under a very strong light. The light was our sun.
One of the jar held nothing, which was our control. the other held water because of water vapor being the strongest greenhouse gas because it makes all the other gases stay longer. The third has vinegar and baking soda, which creates CO2.
3 thermometers were placed inside the jars and we covered the ops with plastic foil. When doing research on our project we found out that water vapor was supposed to have the highest temperature change, while air the lowest.
We recorded the temperature of the jars every 5 minutes for 5 minutes.
Data:
| |
0min |
5min |
10min |
15min |
20min |
25min |
30min |
35min |
40min |
45min |
50min |
| Air |
25
|
23
|
31
|
34
|
36
|
41
|
44
|
48
|
51
|
52
|
56
|
| Water |
25
|
29
|
33
|
40
|
48
|
53
|
58
|
66
|
69
|
72
|
74
|
| CO2 |
25
|
25
|
32
|
36
|
40
|
44
|
48
|
53
|
57
|
61
|
64
|
From our results we saw that air was the lowest, water was the highest and CO2 was the median. This is what we thought we would find out.
Pictures would be included but for some reason I am unable to upload them to the blog.
The reason for our experiment was to see how the greenhouse effect works.
Background:
The Greenhouse effect naturally occurs every day due to how we consume energy. As decades go by there are new sources of how we consume energy leading to this effect. Some ordinary reasons for greenhouse gases to emit into our earth are because of burning fossil fuels primarily gas and coal, electrical appliances, increase in automobiles, and population growth.
We chose to do this experiment for a few different reasons. Primarily because the greenhouse effect is so important in the aspect of how it is deteriorating our earth. What it does is trap the suns energy or radiation it omits thus causing further problems on our earth. A major problem it is causing is global warming. This means that sea level rises because of ice capsules at sea melting. Also more droughts, floods and fierce storms are occurring due to this. The reason for this is because due to the increases of the earth’s temperature, water evaporates from the ocean more rapidly than it ever has. In this lab, we will be using a heat lamp which is representing the radiant given off by the sun. In each jar, we will have different greenhouse gases which are carbon dioxide, water vapor, and just air. We deemed it necessary to use water vapor because it is the most potent greenhouse gas emitting (36%-70%). Also Carbon dioxide is another major greenhouse gas giving off anywhere between (9%-26%). What we are trying to gain from of our experiment is to show how different models representing carbon dioxide, air, and water vapor trap heat. These models although much more miniscule to the real atmosphere are supposed to represent how heat is trapped into the earth’s atmosphere due to existing variant greenhouse gases. We hypothesized that since water vapor is the most potent greenhouse gas, it will trap the most heat. Falling close behind would be carbon dioxide trapping the second most heat and lastly would be our control jar; which is air.