Science Term 2 Chem Blog

 For the past few weeks, we have been doing experiments that all had to do with the states of matter. 

One of the experiments we did was called dropping pins. Which was conduction, meaning heat travelling through a solid making the particles vibrate. 

To begin with, we lit up the Bunsen burner and added petroleum jelly or Vaseline on the head of the drawing pins. Then we attached the drawing pins to the metal rod then we waited for the pins to drop.

The reason why the pins dropped was because of the heat travelling through the metal rod and when the particles on the metal rod were heated up it made those particles vibrate faster and faster until it finally caused the pins to drop from the metal rod.

Convection Experiment 

The other experiment we did was the convection experiment which is basically heat travelling through liquid or gas.

What happened was, We placed 150mls of cold water on a tripod next to a Bunsen burner that isn't lit up yet. Then we put a straw in the water without moving the beaker. After that we dropped  the crystal using tweezers in the straw and then immediately took it off as soon as the crystal reached the bottom of the beaker. Finally we litt up the Bunsen burner and waited for the water to fully turn purple.

So even if the Bunsen burner was only heating up the outside of the beaker, the crystal still managed to diffuse because the heat travelled through the liquid.