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I am investigating, to find out what factors effects the temperature of water when heated by a small immersion heater under water.
Preliminary Work
The factors that I will vary are the volume of the water as we can see from this how the more the water there is, the less the temperature rises and when there is less water the temperature rises quicker. So then after that I could vary the time so we can see what happens over a longer time, when there is more water.
So I will monitor the temperature to see how quickly or slowly the experiment goes.
For this experiment I will be using an immersion heater, which will be under water. I also will have a measuring cylinder, which will be where the water and the heater will go. The heater will be connected to a circuit and a 12-volt power supply with ammeters and voltmeters, which can be seen in the diagram. There are some safety things such as; the immersion heater should be under water all the time, because then the heater starts to give off lots of smoke.
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Also the circuit must be set up right or it will short circuit and blow the fuses.
So what I would do is to get the right amount of water and then get my stopwatch ready and put the immersion heater in. Next I would take the temp of the water at the start. Then I would put the power on and wait till the 3 mins were up and take the temperature and find the difference and start again with a different volume of water until all the volumes were done.
Experimental Plan
The key factors in my experiment are volume of water and the time the temperature of the room.
I will control time by keeping it the same and the room temperature I cannot control but it should stay consent, as there are no big fluctuation in the room temperature. The volume, I control as I have to change it have a factor that I will vary. I will observe the temperature rising on the thermometer and at the end of 3 mins I will measure the change in temperature between the start and the end. Problem found was, where are you going to put the thermometer to measure the heat. As the immersion heater cannot go all the way to the bottom then water will be mostly heated at the top, as the convection currents will mean that this happens. So we can see that there will be very little change in temperature if the thermometer is on the bottom. The equipment used was all accurate but the problem of accuracy is with the person doing the experiment, because must of the time it is human error and not the equipment.
I am doing an observation from 40ml of water to 100ml and doing one every 10ml on the way. I am not doing one below 40 because the immersion heater will be out of the water and so will not be immersed. So I will get 6 results, which will give me a good accurate graph of results. My readings will be taken after 3 mins, where I can then see what the temperature difference is. I will ensure the results are reliable by repeating the experiment and so getting and average result and so more reliable results.
So from this experiment I predict that the test with the least amount of water will be the one with the biggest temperature change and the one with the most water will have the smallest. I can be sure of this because my scientific knowledge tells me that, the more water the long it takes for the hot water to diffuse in the colder water and to warm it up, this is because the molecular take longer to get to all areas of the cylinder and take longer to warm up. So this is all to do with particle theory and that the water warm up when there are more collisions between the molecules. .
Obtaining Evidence
All the apparatus used is detailed in the planning. I will make the proper and safe use of the apparatus by using all lad rules which ensure that most thing will not go wrong also the apparatus used has all be used by myself before and so I know if I must use it and also how to use it. I must use a thermeter because I am trying to see the temperature change when different amounts of water are used. I also used a measuring cylinder so I could measure the amounts of water accurately.
I am going to measure the temperature change over a time span of 3 mins. Also I will be changing the amount of water after every 3 minutes tests. So seeing if the amount of water will affect the temperature of the water after the 3 minutes heating with the immersion heater.
The only safe problems are that if the immersion heater is not under water the heater starts to smoke and also if the heater is too low in the water then the electricity and the water make contact and the circuit and heater blow. So the problem of people short-circuiting their experiment has come up. The most obvious is that of turning the heater off when not using and not touching it when hot.
I can ensure that my results are reliable to a certain point, but there is also human error. I can cut this down by doing a repeat of the experiment so getting an average and we hope more reliable results. Also I will only do my results to 2 sig fig as with a thermometer it is the most reliable way, because if you do it to a decimal place then you get into the area of guessing.
Volume (ml)
Starting Temp
Ending Temp
Time (mins)
Change in Temp
35
22
55
3
33
40
18
50
3
32
50
19
46
3
27
60
20
41
3
21
70
21
38
3
17
80
21
32
3
11
90
20
27
3
7
100
20
24
3
4
Repeats
100
20
22
3
2
90
20
26
3
5
80
20
34
3
13
70
21
36
3
15
60
21
40
3
19
50
21
46
3
25
40
21
52
3
30
35
22
57
3
35
The limitations are that in the volume we cannot go below 35ml as then the immersion heater is no longer under water and so we get the safety problems and also the problem of different amounts of heat being used and so no longer a fair test. Another problem was starting the stopwatch at the same time as the immersion heater started to heat. The last problem was that of keeping the immersion heater and thermometer away from each other. If nearly touching the result would be totally wrong and also there would be anomalous results and it would no longer be a fair test.
Analysing
The trends we have on this graph is a downward one as you can see on the graph. We can see that it is like a cooling curve and the result are very good as there are no real anomalous results. From this graph we can see if are results are right by using the specific heat capacity formula
Q = m c t
Q = heat energy
M = mass
T = Temperature change
So if we re arrange the formula we get:
C = Q
(m t )
The factor I changed was water volume. The relationship was that as the water volume increased the temperature change went down and as the volume of water goes down the temperature change goes up. So I can conclude that as the water volume is increased the change in temperature goes down and as the water volume is decreased the temperature change goes up. I had predicted that the test with the least amount of water will be the one with the biggest temperature change and the one with the most would be the smallest. These predictions were spot on as we can see from the graph, as it shows that the biggest temperature change was with the smallest amounts and also the one with the smallest change was with the biggest amount.
This is because of particle theory and the collisions and diffusion. The more water the long it takes for the hot water to diffuse in colder water and to warm it up, this is because the molecular take longer to get to all areas of the cylinder and take longer to warm up. So this is all to do with particle theory and that the water warm up when there are more collisions between the molecules, the collision get more and more as the water warms. So the colder the water and the more water, then there are less collisions. So using my scientific knowledge I could explain way by conclusion was right.
Evaluation
I think my results are as accurate as I could have made them as I did the repeat, which meant I could do an average of the two sets of results. No I had no real unusual sets of result as my result were as accurate as I could have done them with the time. If I had got some unusual results I would account human error in the main, as it is very rarely apparatus problems.
I could improve the experiment by maybe having a bigger immersion heat which would heat all of the water, but would give out the same amount of heat as the normal ones and smaller heater so I could do more volumes lower down the scale. Also having a way of keeping the thermometer at the same distance from the heater at all times. Also having bigger measuring cylinders so that I could do more volumes higher up the scale. The only way to get more reliable results are by doing more repeat to get more accurate results, but still then you can not get perfect
results as things can always go wrong in an experiment.
The way of extending it is by doing different factors such as Time and heat loss by doing experiments with the carpet around the cylinder to show the differences between the two experiments.
Factors Affecting Immersion Heater Water Temperature. (2020, Jun 02). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/factor-effect-temperature-water-heated-small-immersion-heater-new-essay
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