Investigating Conduction

Earth ScienceName______

Date ______

Period ______

Investigating Conduction

BACKGROUND:

When two objects or two regions within an environment have different temperatures, heat energy may move from one region (object) to the otherby a process of direct interaction or touching. This heating process is called conduction. For example, if your hand is warm and you hold hands with someone whose hand is cold, eventually both hands will become about the same temperature. Overall, there are three ways heat energy can be transferred: radiation, conduction, and convection. Today’s lab will investigate conduction.

PROCEDURE:

1. At your lab station you need the following materials:

1. 4 Styrofoam containers
2. 4 Styrofoam lids
3. 4 thermometers
4. 1 metal conductor (U-shaped metal bar, copper wire, bent fork, aluminum foil etc.)

2. There will be 2 separate lab setups, a control setup, and an experimentation setup. Note: the metal conductor is ONLY used in the experimentation setup.

3. Put the thermometers through the little slashes in the Styrofoam lids.

4. Fill two containers with cold water.

5. Fill the other two containers with boiling water.

6. Make two hot-cold setups. Place the hot and cold containers side by side.

7. Put the lids with the thermometers in them onto the containers.

8. Wait 1 minute and record the temperature of each container. THIS WILL BE YOUR INTIAL TEMPERATURE for both lab setups!

9. Record these temperatures intoeach of your data tables.

10. Remove a set of lids (one hot container, one cold container) with the thermometers still in them and quickly work the metal conductor (the U-shaped bar or a conductor approved by teacher) into the big slashes in the Styrofoam covers.

11. Put the lids back onto the containers with the conductor in place. This is your experimentation setup. The other setup WITHOUT the conductor is the control setup.

11. Record the temperature of each container every minute for 30 minutes. Record the temperatures into your data tables.

13. When finished, graph your data onto graph paper. X-axis = time (minutes); Y-axis = temperature (Celsius).

14. Follow graphing rules.

DATA TABLE (EXPERIMENTATION SETUP):

DATA TABLE (CONTROL SETUP):

QUESTIONS:

What is a conductor? ______

What is an insulator? ______

How are conductors and insulators different? ______

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What object(s) acted as conductor for this lab? ______

What object(s) acted as an insulator for this lab? ______

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In the control setup, explainwhat happened to the water temperature in each container:

Cold water container:

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Hot water container:

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In the experimentation setup, explainwhat happened to the water temperature in each container:

Cold water container:

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Hot water container:

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What was the rate of temperature change for the control hot water container? DON’T FORGETYOUR UNITS! (Hint: Total temperature change divided by total minutes)

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What was the rate of temperature change for the experimentation hot water container? DON’T FORGETYOUR UNITS! (Hint: Total temperature change divided by total minutes)

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What was the rate of temperature change for the control cold water container? DON’T FORGET YOUR UNITS! (Hint: Total temperature change divided by total minutes)

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What was the rate of temperature change for the experimentation cold water container? DON’T FORGET YOUR UNITS! (Hint: Total temperature change divided by total minutes)

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If you continued recording the temperature for 24 hours, what do you think would eventually happen to the water temperature in each container within the control setup?

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If you continued recording the temperature for 24 hours, what do you think would eventually happen to the water temperature in each container within the experimentation setup?

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What specific metal (element) always acts as an excellent conductor? Hint: it is the color bronze and has 6 letters.

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