Chemical Forums

Chemistry Forums for Students => High School Chemistry Forum => Topic started by: caribgirl on February 20, 2005, 04:31:48 PM

Title: plan and designing experiments
Post by: caribgirl on February 20, 2005, 04:31:48 PM
hey ppl... i've got 2 questions that i need some help with. thanks for at lest looking


question 1:

During a class discussion in a chemistry lesson. Charles argued that the heat of combustion of primary alcohols increases as the number of carbon atoms in the molecule increases. Plan and design an experiment to determine whether Charles' claim is correct.

question 2:

A forth form Chemistry student tried unsuccessfully to coat a plastic disc with nickel using electrolysis. Plan and design an experiment to successfully coat the plastic disc with nikel.

for this question i know i have to first clean the disc and evenly coat it with graphite then proform the electroylsis. i'm not sure as to what amount of current to use, but i'm sure it's gonna be a smal amount. i'm also not sure as to how to start answering and how to phrase everything.

thank u so much for your time :)
Title: Re:plan and designing experiments
Post by: savoy7 on February 20, 2005, 04:47:38 PM
Let's work on the first experiment

What's your hypothesis (or Charles')?

fill in the blanks
IF (blank) , then (blank).

hint deals with primary alchols, # of C and Heat of Combustion

Design - how to go about testing the hypothesis
In the design you are going to have to come up with a technique to test heat of combustion - do you have any ideas how you can test how much energy is released during the combustion of an alcohol?

provide some work on these and resubmit.  I'm sure someone will help.


savoy
Title: Re:plan and designing experiments
Post by: Donaldson Tan on February 21, 2005, 09:16:42 PM
use a bomb calorimeter for qn(1)
Title: Re:plan and designing experiments
Post by: savoy7 on February 21, 2005, 11:08:50 PM
cool website with an animation of a bomb calorimeter

http://www.chm.davidson.edu/ronutt/che115/Bomb/Bomb.htm

msn website on simple calorimeter -
http://chemistry.about.com/library/weekly/aa100503a.htm

hope college site on bomb calorimetery
http://www.chem.hope.edu/~polik/Chem345-1997/calorimetry/bombcalorimetry1.html