Creating,+imagining,+and+innovating

= Creating, imagining, and innovating =

One instance of creating, imagining, and innovating was with the experiment our group conducted, which consisted of Amie, Jacob, and Wendy. During this experiment, we had to measure the amount of energy produced by the increase of temperature in water in two different types of alcohol, ethanol and propanol. However, our job was not only to measure the amount of energy that is produced by the alcohol to burn the water, but to do it accurately and precisely so that all of the heat released is directed on the aluminum can filled with water. By limiting the amount of heat that escapes to the experiment, the aluminum can would be focused with the most heat and cause the most accurate change in temperature because less heat is being lost to the environment. This would therefore make our results much more accurate. However, it was up to each group to think of a possible way to create a device that would control the heat so it would be focused directly on the aluminum can filled with water. Our group had to imagine possible ways to develop a contraption that would limit the reduction of heat. One explanation that came up was that we could surround the alcohol burner with aluminum foil in order to contain the heat in the upward direction to hit the aluminum can directly. We followed this idea with a quick sketch to help us illustrate our idea and the experiment we were about to conduct. The following picture can illustrate the diagram.



As seen from this well drawn and labeled diagram, we were going to use aluminum foil to wrap the alcohol burner to the aluminum can to control the heat directly on the water. We even cut open a slight hole in the aluminum foil to light the wick of the alcohol burner, and also to allow oxygen to flow in to keep the flame lit. This being considered, probably a small amount of heat was released through this hole which may have made our experiment less reliable. However, nonetheless this idea still worked very well because we were able to limit the amount of heat that was lost to the environment and focus the heat directly on the water. As a group we created an idea, then we imagined what it would look like to draw a diagram, and then innovated to conduct the experiment accurately.