An Experiment to Find the Amount of Heat Energy Released When 1g of Candle Wax Burns - page 2
Keywords: An Experiment to Find the Amount of Heat Energy Released When 1g of Candle Wax Burns Chemistry GCSE
By slashwk on 23/11/2006 17:19:06
Level: GCSE Key Stage 4 (Years 10-11)
Page Number: 2 of 3 pages: 1 2 3
we can narrow it down a bit.
Experiments 3, 4 and 5 weren’t carried out by us, but rather other trusted independent groups. We cannot be sure about whether these other groups observed the same measures as we did when conducting this experiment, so the validity of their results cannot be verified. Nevertheless, we ourselves conducted experiment 2 in a bias (on purpose) to observe what results we would achieve if we had done it that way. The bias involved leaving a 1.5cm gap between the flame and the beaker. This bias caused our results to tell us that there were 8.898kJ of energy for every gram of candle wax. This is very different from our ‘ideally’ carried out experiment number 1, which predicted 19.973kJ of energy per every gram. We can safely assume that experiment 1 is much more likely to give us a more reliable result because we kept the flame touching the bottom of the beaker for the best results. As we know that experiment number 2 is void because it predicts that there is 8.898kJ of energy per gram, we can deduct that experiment 3 carried out by one of the independent groups is void because it predicts 8.662kJ per gram which is very similar to that of experiment 2. We don’t know whether the group made the same ‘mistake’ of having the flame too far away from the beaker, but we can construe that they did something along those lines.
Experiment 5, predicts 13.137kJ of energy for every gram of candle wax. We have spoken with the group which carried out the experiment, and they admit that they had not only allowed the flame a gap between it and the beaker, but they also did not form a barrier between the air currents and the flame. We can now safely assume that these results are also void.
As we are confident with the findings of experiment 1 because it was carried out in the ideal way, we can be more biased towards it when it is challenged by a different set of results. However, experiment 4 which suggests that there 21.911kJ of energy for every gram of candle wax was carried out in the exact same manner. If we leave a bit of space for uncontrollable inaccuracies in the process, we can safely predict that there is somewhere between 20kJ and 22kJ of energy per gram of
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