Week 13 Reflection

Still dealing with Joules and energy. A new idea was brought about, thermal energy and phase energy. Thermal dealing with movement of particles and Phase dealing with arrangement of particles. Finding the specific heat of copper was an interesting find being that, due to uncertainty, we werent that far from the actual specific heat number.

week 12 reflection

we learned what a Joule is, and the formula for specific. Which is the Joules over the mass multiplied by the change in temperature equals specific heat. We also went into depth of a phase diagram, showing at what point between pressure and temperature the phases are of a substance. Finding the a missing component in the specific heat formula isn't quite hard, as we demonstrated in class most of the time. The assessment we had on it wasn't hard either, specific heat is easy to understand, very simple, I say.

Thermos Experiment

I made my thermos by wrapping tin foil around a styrofoam cup numerous times. One mistake, though, was not making it a close system, my thermos had no lid. Everyone should have started at 353.15 K and from there recorded 30 minutes of decreasing temperature, ours went down 27 K within 30 minutes. If it was a closed system maybe the thermos would have decreased slower. 

Week 10 Reflection.

At the beginning of the week we did a lab involving cold water and what the affects would be after adding less volume of hot water or more volume of room temperature water. In the end, adding the room temp. water increased the ice water more than the hot water did. What happened was, since the volume of the room temp. water was larger than the hot water container, it warmed the ice water up more. If they were the same volume the hot water would have made the ice water warmer.

Week 9 Reflection

Well this week we learned about pressure and temperature a bit more. Dealt with barometers and thermometers, and even made a barometer. A barometer measures pressure, atmospheric pressure. A simple way of making a barometer is by stretching a balloon over a glass jar with a straw on top, when there's low pressure outside the balloon is inflated a little, when there's high pressure the balloon dips down a bit. 

Week 4 Reflection

week 4 consisted of involving density into play. finding the density of liquids,solids and gases even. it wasn't that difficult, even when we had to find a missing variable. all you had to do really is use common sense in a way, i.e. water displacement. It would be interesting if we had more of a challenge one lab we do, it could be useful to.