Designing an Experiment

1. The reason to do an experiment is to get real world data to validate a math model and to aid in the design process. Ours specifically is to validate our math model for heat transfer of cold ice or mug to warm water.

2.Our knowledge construction was not very extensive. We knew most of the basic ideas off the top of our heads from compiling our math models.

3.Our predictions for this experiment were that our math model would differ from the experimental data by around 10% to 15%. This however would increase with time as there would be more heat loss from the system.

4.In our experiment we are going to do several tests with ice in water and then after we have a good process narrowed down then we will use the cold mug once (the reason for this being that the mug would take a long time to cool down every single time we run the experiment).

Our goals are to have 5 workable data points with ice and 1 with an iced glass.

We will measure temperature with an arduino temperature probe that we will waterproof for this experiment (probably just put it in a plastic bag or something similarly cheap and easy to find.

Our data could easily be altered by several things. Since we are not considering time as a parameter then we could wait either too long or not long enough for the equilibrium temperature and generate error from incomplete equilibration or by energy gained from outside the system.

We will test our sensors by comparing their data to the temperature probe on a multimeter.

Our biggest challenges will be trying to wait the right amount of time for equilibration and insulating our system well. Our plan will simply be to test the temperature of the freezer from which we take the ice and then testing the water temperature before hand and putting the ice in and watching the temperature change. When the water is no longer changing temperature very quickly we will consider it at an equilibrium temperature and record the data and compare it to our math model.

Steven:

No problem!

You are excused for a late.
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Thanks! 

Don

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