Finished!

I have now completed all my trials for all my liquids and have gone ahead to do my report, which is now printed and finished. I was happy with the results and how my experiment turned out, there were some improvements that could be made, but overall, it was pretty good.

I decided, when doing the trials for one of the liquids is that the results weren't all that similar, and maybe I might have to put in more trials, so I made it that I have to do 5 trials for each liquid, so the final table and graph will have a couple of extra columns to fit in that adjustment.

I did a trial run of the experiment to see if it would work or not and I realised that the marble was a little big for the tube. So instead, I found cermic pie weights which are about half the size of a marble. That worked well in water. I am going to tie the tube to a metre ruler to keep the tube straight and then put it onto a slope and then I'll do the actual experiment from there. I tied rubber bands around the tube to the ruler, amrking off the start and finish point- the overall distance that the ball has to travel for each trial is 60 cm.

Starting the Experiment

I have bought all the equipment I need for the experiment. I have plastic tubing, a plastic cap to seal one end of
the tube, a marble, a stopwatch and a variety of liquids.
So now, my next step is to start the experiment. It should be very straight forward and shouldn't take too much time. Straight from my average results, I'll create a column graph based on the average results and then draw a conclusion based on the results. All this information will then be written up into the final report.

So, in my previous post, I posted a mind map of my final idea- viscosity of liquids. From this, I mentioned that the dependent variable is the time taken for the marble to roll through a liquid within a test tube. This time recorded will be an indicator to the viscosity to each liquid, as the faster the marble rolls through the liquid, the less viscous the liquid is. In this case, I will create a table for my results, which will look somewhat like this:

With each trial, I will add the results, and find an average, which I will then create a graph to show my findings. Finding the average provides more reilable results.

Mind Map- Viscosity of Liquids

Absolute Final Idea!

I have now come to my absoulte final idea. I will definitely be ivestigating the viscosity of certain liquids found in the kitchen. These could include honey, canola oil, wines, water, vinegar, yoghurt, egg whites, thickened cream and many more.
I am using this website https://www.planetseed.com/node/19124 as a reference on how to conduct this experiment and also for ideas.

Saturation Point

Like I mentioned before, I had these two possible ideas for my experiment, one of them being the viscosity of liquids, as explained in my pervious post, and the other idea is the saturation point of water using different additives, which I will explain in this post.
So this basically is testing how much of a certain additive can I dissolve into water before the water can't possibly hold anymore. This could be done by using the same amount of water, and adding the same amount of different additives each time, or changing the temperature of the water (for example, leaving it in the fridge, or boiling the water) and testing whether the same amount of one additive, which I will use throughout the whole experiment, is able to dissolve into the water, or is the water able to take more or less than the base amount. If so, by how much.

For this experiment, I would need a measuring jug/ cup to measure the water and the additives, different types of additives, for the first experiment, or just one type for the second, and objects that will change the temperature of the water, for example, a stove and a fridge.

I will later on announce my final idea in upcoming posts, and get started on conducting it.

Thickness of Liquids

So one of my ideas mentioned in the pervious post was the thickness of liquids. I was thinking that I could conduct this experiment in two ways. I either use water as a base, and then add materials to the water, for example sugar or cornflour, to see if the dripping rate has changed. In doing this, I would measure how much liquid has dripped into a measuring cup over a period of, say, 10 seconds. This would indicate the thickness, as the thicker a liquid gets, the less it would drip, therefore have a smaller final amount of liquid in the measuring cup after the 10 seconds.

 I also had this other idea where I used different liquids, instead of just water with additives but still testing the thickness of the liquids. For example, I might use honey, fruit nectar, etc...

In order to conduct this experiment, I'd need to use a funnel, with a very small hole so that the liquid doesn't all pour out at the same time, a measuring cup to catch the drops of liquid, and a timer. The thickness of each liquid would be measured one at a time, so I can ensure reliable results by using the same funnel each time. I would also use the same amount of liquid for each test, and the same amount of additives if I was to do the experiment with water as a base.

Okay, so in my previous post, I had come up with my final idea, which was to measure the burning rate of different type of wax candles.
Well, from research and talking to my teacher, I realised that this experiment would be a lot harder than I thought. I have to consider some very small details, which in the larger picture makes a big difference to the result of the experiment. For example, I have to make sure that the wick material is the same within each candle. Now that is pretty hard, considering that I'm not planning on making my own candles, and the candles found in shops don't usually mention the material that the wick is made from... So I guess I have to move onto a different idea...
Luckily enough, I do have some other ideas that I thought of recently, which include the thickness of liquids, or saturation point, which is how much of a certain material I can possibly dissolve into a liquid.
I'm still thinking about how I might conduct these experiments, in terms of materials and all that, but once I have a clearer image of how I'll do things, I'll continue to post my thoughts and process.

Final Idea- Candle wax

I have finally thought of my final idea. It's going to be an experiment on which type of candle wax burns the fastest. I am going to conduct this experiment by buying 3 candles, each different types of candle wax.
I'll measure the height of each candle in centimetres, and make sure each are the same size. Then I'll light each candle, and let them burn for an hour.
Once and hour is up, I'll tip out the melted wax into a bowl and weigh the wax extracted from each candle, then measure the height of each candle and record my results in a table.
This will then be repeated 3 times over, or I'll buy 3 of each type of candle and conduct the experiment all at the same time.

Candle Idea Mind Map

Idea Mind Map

Still Thinking?

I've been having some second thoughts about the balloon experiment, especially about the practicality and now that I think of it, I don't think it would be quite pleasant to have balloons continuously popping in your face. So I've some other thoughts about possible ideas.
A couple of my other ideas were:
changing the amount of vinegar in toffee to see which toffee batch would set fastest
and, I know the notification says no flammable substances, but I was thinking that if I set different types of nuts on fire and timed how long each nut took to burn out, I could determine which nut has the highest oil content.
The thing is, I asked about the nut experiment, and it isn't going to work, because the nut could be burning not just from its oil content, so i guess I'll have to scratch that idea.

Ideas

  So far I've had a few ideas about my experiment topic. One of my previous ideas was to find out how long it would take for pancake batter to cook if i gradually changed the temperature of the stove. I had some other thoughts, but they didn't seem too practical.  

  I've also been thinking of an idea about balloons and the average amount of pumps it takes to make them pop. That's one of my stronger ideas so far, and if I don't think of any others soon, then I'll stick with that idea. 

First Lesson

  For our science assessment, we were given a student research project (SRP) which helps demonstrate our ability in planning and conducting experiments.
  The steps I am going to take are:

1. Choose a topic
2. Gather information
3. Propose a hypothesis
4. Design experiment
5. Conduct experiment
6. Record results 
7. Write a conclusion

  I haven't chosen a topic at the moment, but when I do think of one, and I've started the experiment, I'll record all process notes and results as I go. But until then, hopefully everything goes to plan!