Thermal Insulation

• Steps :

  1. Place a small beaker inside a large beaker
  2. Use a kettle to boil some water
  3. Transfer 80cm^3 of the hot water into the small beaker
  4. Use cardboard as a lid for the large beaker
• Steps :


  5. The lid must have a hole for a thermometer

  6. Place the thermometer through the cardboard lid

  7. The bulb of the thermometer must be in the hot water

  8. Record the starting temperature of the water and start a stopwatch

  9. Record the temperature of the water every 3 minutes for 15 minutes
• Steps :


  10. Repeat the experiment using the same volume of hot water

  11. Use an insulating material (eg. bubble wrap), this is done in order to fill the gap between the 2 beakers

  12. Test a range of different insulating materials

  13. These insulating materials may include cotton wool and polystyrene balls
• Steps 


  14. Use the same mass of insulating material in each case

  15. The independent variable in this case is the type of insulating material

  16. The Dependent variable is the one that is measured for each change in the independent variable - Eg. Temperature
• Control Variables ?

  • Volume of water and the mass of insulating material
  • Starting temperature of the water the same for each experiment
• Steps

  • Record all of our results in a table
  • From this experiment, we can plot cooling curves for the different insulators
  • We should see that the water will cool most slowly with the most effective insulating material
• How thickness of the material affects the thermal insulation?

  • Start with a beaker which contains 80cm^3 of hot water
  • Measure the temperature of the water every 3 minutes for fifteen minutes
  • Repeat the experiment again but now wrap 2 layers of newspaper around the beaker
  • REPEAT experiment 2 more times by using 4 layer s and 6 layers of newspaper
  • The independent variable is the number of layers of newspaper
• How thickness of material affects the thermal insulation ?

  • Dependent variable in this investigation is the temperature
  • Control variables in this experiment is the starting temperature of the water and the volume of water
  • The more layers of newspaper the slower the water cools down