2/26 Thermal Expansion and Phase Change

Professor Mason is testing to see whether or not the metal ring would fit around the metal ball after heat has been applied to the ring.

Each group hypothesizes what happens to molecules when energy is transferred to the molecules

Each group makes educated guesses on what 4 things contribute to the thermal expansion on the metal rod.

Professor Mason is testing to see whether the metal rod will bend toward the brass side or the invar side by applying heat to it.

Each group makes their predictions on how the metal will bend based off each metal's thermal expansion constant prior to testing.

Professor Mason places the already heated metal rod into a bucket of ice water to see if the rod will become straight, stay the same, or bend slightly back to being straight.

We observe the long metal rod when steam is circulating through it to see how the metal will expand and how much it will turn the wheel on the left.

Each group uses the formulas learned in class and applies it to the experiment to see how much the wheel should turn based on the measured data.

These two graphs are showing the relationship between the temperature change and the rate of expansion of the rod that is being shown through the turning of the wheel.

After the linear expansion of the metal rod, each group is asked to find the uncertainty of the data collected.

A fellow student is stirring an electric heater inside ice cold water to observe the temperature change that occurs in the water.

Here is the graph of the change in temperature in the water after 6 minutes of stirring the electric heater inside the water.

Here is our prediction of what the graph of the change of water temperature before the experiment.

After the electric heater in ice experiment, we were asked to calculate the final temperature of the water.

Here is a video of a manometer being used to indicate pressure.

Here, we calculated for the uncertainty in the linear expansion of steel experiment. We calculated the uncertainty of theta, the initial length of the metal rod, the radius of the rod, and the temperature change.

We measured how far up the water was being pressured and used that to determine how much pressure (in Pascals) was being applied to the water inside the manometer.


Summary:

We learned thermal expansion, how a cold and hot temperatures behave when mixed together, and how to use a barometer to measure pressure. All of this was done through experiments and all the groups were asked to predict how the experiment would turn out. Most of the day was spent learning by observing how heat works through experiments rather than through calculations.