Investigating Capacitors - page 8
Keywords: Investigating Capacitors coursework GCSE physics
By slashwk on 23/11/2006 17:28:09
Level: GCSE Key Stage 4 (Years 10-11)
Page Number: 8 of 9 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
3 volts, and those involving 6 volts. This could have all just been coincidence, but the fact that each value on the table for experiment 5 was very close to double that of that in experiment 1 leads me to believe there is more of a story out there and that I should design an experiment to investigate this further. Below I have redrawn the tables and on the very right show how many times more the figures in experiment 5 were close to experiment 1:
Time (secs) Experiment 1 Experiment 5 Exp5/Exp1
5 0.97 2.4 2.474227
10 1.69 3.5 2.071006
15 2.03 4.18 2.059113
20 2.3 4.6 2
25 2.46 4.93 2.004065
30 2.56 5.14 2.007813
35 2.63 5.25 1.996198
40 2.68 5.33 1.988806
45 2.7 5.38 1.992593
50 2.72 5.42 1.992647
55 2.73 5.44 1.992674
60 2.74 5.46 1.992701
65 2.75 5.47 1.989091
70 2.75 5.48 1.992727
75 2.75 5.48 1.992727
Of course the number 2 is not hit exactly by dividing one by the other each time; this is because of human error and the fact that one can only perform an experiment to a certain degree of accuracy according to one’s facilities. One can also point out the way that the likeliness to 2 is decreasing as time goes on. This factor though could also give more depth to the correlation as well as it obviously being another factor for the argument of coincidence.
Another reason for slightly inaccurate data would be the fact that the circuit was constantly being used, and whether heat has an effect on the way a capacitor charges could be a factor. I would predict it to be so because heat causes the electrons to move more and thus creating more resistance and altering factors within the circuit.
Evaluation
Many aspects of our experiment could have been improved. First of all we should start with the anomalous data which occurred in experiment 8. This was due to a miscommunication between the man with the stopwatch, and the man who was watching the voltmeter. This anomaly could have been avoided by the use of ICT. We could have wired up the voltmeter to a computer and gotten the computer to record exactly what the voltage was at the 5 or 10 second interval.
Another aspect which needed improving was the fact that our books were all over the table when we carried out this whole procedure. During one experiment, someone moved a book from under the resistor and caused it to move in such a way that the capacitor all of a sudden became fully charged.
A simple repetition of the same experiment could have given verification as to whether the information obtained from each procedure was accurate or not. I had initially wished for us to repeat experiments, but time stresses
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