Oh this week I had a blunder!!! Instead of just heating the water to a warmer temperature for our experiment, I BOILED it. THEN I decided to place the thermometer in. Big mistake!!! The thermomtere IMMEDIATELY exploded and I had to head back to school and grab a thermometer from my supplies!
I chose foil, plastic wrap, a shirt and a piece of paper to test as insulators. The heat energy in the water was moving through the air via radiation. These materials were being tested to see which one best slowed down that process. To my surprise, the shirt was the best insulator, however, it did become saturated with water that evaporated from the mug.
When I got this result I immediately starting thinking about different types of clothing and how they keep us warm. I would like to test out a sweatshirt, a t-shirt, a pair of jeans and a long sleeve shirt. I imagine that the sweatshirt and or jeans would be the best insulator because they are a much thicker material and there is less space for the molecules to move through. I might test my body surface temperature if I did this experiment again. I'm not sure if that is possible, but it would be fun to try!
I would set this up with some sort of food that the students eat everyday. Pizza maybe, and heat it up to a certain temperature in the beginning of class, have the students wrap it in different materials and in different sizes, or place it in different containers and have them hypothesize what the outcome would be. We could then get into a discussion about how the cafeteria keeps our food warm and the different ways that this could happen.
I would want students to understand that different materials will act better as insulators than others. By doing the experiment with the water in the mugs I was able to confirm why I place foil over food to keep it warm. It also got my brain thinking about the different types of clothing I wear according to the weather. I think that by having the students see the results of the pizza or food experiment they would be able to see that different materials are better suited for acting as an insulator than others.
I my goodness Kaydee. That is a riot! When it said use hot water, I thought to boil it too! When I studied the thermometer I realized it did not go very high and thought that was odd. I am very glad I didn't boil it though. I liked the activity too but quite simplistic and a bit dull. I would need too jazz it up as well with maybe hot chocolate and apply it to Dunkin Donuts or something.
ReplyDeleteLori
I tried to use a regular thermometer first, big mistake I didn't realize that my tap water was so hot. This is so funny. What was your starting temperature?
ReplyDeleteMy starting temperature AFTER I let the water cool down a bit as 60 degrees Celcius. I'm so glad others had the same issue I had!
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