February 7, 2011

Today in class, we went over the homework from the weekend and did an activity that involved lighting paper on fire.

Our activity: We took a box with 2 "chimneys", lit paper, and out it in the box with chimneys. We closed the door to the box and smoke started coming out of Chimney B. Here's a picture of the box with chimneys. I predicted that the smoke would go out both chimneys, but out of chimney B first. What happened: The smoke came out of B, so my prediction was half-wrong. Then, we did the same thing but placed a candle under chimney A. (the paper is still under chimney B). I predicted that the smoke will go out chimney B. What happened: The smoke came out of chimney A. The science we learned is that when particles move quickly, they can transfer, in this case, smoke. We learned these ideas by observing this experiment and making predictions about it. It's important to learn this because in this experiment it showed a real life example of this.

After the experiment, we thought of a relation between our experiment and convection.

Relation: There's more energy at A (because of the candle) and the air particles went up, so the candle gave the smoke energy. That's how the smoke went up chimney A. There's more empty space for air, so the air is sinking/falling and becoming more dense. That's why it goes into B, then A.

-EP