Month: October 2016

Research Question: Does the amount of acetone affect the length of the “black snake”

 

IV: The amount of Acetone

 

DV: The length of the snake

 

Controlled Variables: Amount of sugar, sand, baking soda.

 

Hypothesis: We believe that the more acetone we put in the longer the “black snake” will be. We believe so because the acetone is highly flammable which could have more reaction on the snake. This meaning, that the fire will last longer, hence making the snake longer.

 

Data table:

Observations	Amount of acetone (ml)	Length of snake (cm)
We think we took too long to light it up and the liquid dried out	5ml	0cm
We put the liquid in one place and lit it up as soon as possible though a tiny reaction, almost nothing happened	5ml	0cm
The reaction came really quick. I’m really happy!	20ml	10cm (height) 12cm (length)
We didn’t leave any space for the fire to reach the acetone.	15ml	4cm (height) 9cm (length)
The experiment went better than the others. Though we left a crevasse that was too big so the base wasn’t as sturdy.	25ml	9cm (height) 17cm (length)

Graph (scatter plot with line of best fit.) 

Discussion: The experiments started of with a couple of failures. Though as we raised the amount of acetone and used the fire from the gas tank on top of that, our results were amazing.The whole experiment worked. Adding the extra fire from the gas tank was a great help as well. The growth of the snake exceeded our expectations in the end. Next time we should try to find a way to make it burn on it’s own and have a solid base.

 

Conclusion: Based on my data, I can conclude that the higher the amount of acetone is, the longer the snake grew. Even though on the 25 ml of acetone snake had a bigger crevasse than needed so the fire reach it and it could burn on it’s own. Even though the base wasn’t as sturdy in total it grew the most(9 cm in height and 17cm in length). The experiments that only got 5 ml of acetone didn’t grow at all because their wasn’t enough heat for the reaction to happen.

IV: The different metals used with the diluted acid

DV: The amount of heat given of the test tube

Controlled Variable: The controlled variable is the amount of diluted acid in each test tube

Discussion: My partner and I discussed that the magnesium gave up way more heat than the zinc. As soon as we put the magnesium in the diluted acid, we got an immediate reaction. Compared to the zinc where a couple of minutes were need.

Data: 

Zinc: The zinc had black pieces of impurities let.

Apart from that it had the same looks as regular salt. Even though the Zinc salt had the looks of table salt it did not have the same taste. IT had the taste of extremely unripe banana.

Magnesium: The magnesium salt had the salt appearance as table salt. Though, like the zinc salt it did not have the same taste. It’s taste extremely bitter unlike table salt.

Based on my data I can conclude that the magnesium a bigger reaction to the diluted acid compared to the zinc due to the amount of heat each test tube gave off.