Science Project

Recently, we completed an experiment involving heat transfer. In groups we had to use tools provided to create the best insulator we could. Our creation had to keep an egg from cooking while heat was applied from a blow torch for three minutes. We were able to test the materials that we thought would work best. We had one hot side which was the side where the heat was being applied and one cold side which was the material behind the hot side. The cold side was the side that would end up being nearest the egg and we hoped that the hot side was a good enough insulator that it was able to keep the heat from going to the cold side. The testing was done by joining 2 materials and seeing what their temperature would be after heat was applied from a heat gun for one minute. Sometimes, our ideas were great! They were able to sustain a good temperature leading us to think they would be great in the actual experiment. Sometimes however, our ideas did dot succeed. They were super hot and would not make for the best heat shield. During this whole process we had to be very purposeful with what we were doing. Why? You may ask. This is because we had a budget, in our case we had a hundred chips or fake dollars to use. This made the project extra challenging because we couldn’t just use an infinite amount of the best insulator there was, especially because the good materials were more expensive than the bad ones. We had three main restrictions for our final project and if we did not follow them points would be taken off. First, our creation had to be one centimeter or less. Second, our creation had to be 45 grams or less. Third, as mentioned before, we only had 100 chips/ fake dollars to use.

When our whole class had finished we made presentations on our projects. Then, we could finally see if our ideas were a success or not. Sadly, ours wasn’t. It didn’t explode so that was great, but there was some cooking and charring. Our egg only cooked .3 of a millimeter, still it wasn’t enough to get us any points. This is how the point system worked. Important: If there was any amount of any of these things it would be zero points. No charring=100 points, No cooking=100 points, any leftover money you had: 100 minus the amount your project cost was rewarded as extra points. This was a really fun project, it was super fun and I learned a lot!