Carbon Chain Hypothesis

It was hypothesised that the longer the carbon chain of an alcohol the more energy output would be released and a longer flame length will be produced due to the extra carbon-carbon and carbon-hydrogen bonds. As the wick length increases so does the flame length and therefore more energy output will be produced. The data collected throughout the course of the three experiments partially supports the hypotheses. However, the results gathered when testing how the length of the carbon chain affects energy output doesn’t support the hypothesis as it was hypothesised that the longer the carbon chain the longer the flame length.
The results collected when testing the length of the carbon chain affecting energy output partially indicates that as the length of the carbon chain increased there was a reduction in flame size. The results above stipulate that when ethanol (C_2 H_6 OH) is burned it produced a greater flame length with an average of 7cm then Butanol (C_4 H_9 OH) with an average of 5cm and Hexanol (C_6 H_14 OH) with an average of 5.33cm which produced significantly lower averages due to the less carbon-carbon bonds. However, …show more content…
However, based on the hypothesis hexanol should have produced the greatest energy output as it has the longest carbon chain out of the alcohols tested, although the results indicate otherwise as hexanol produce an average energy output of 4620KJ which out of all the alcohols test was the smallest data recorded. It can be concluded due to the trend between ethanol, 1-Propanol and Butanol that as the length of the carbon chain increases the energy output also increases. However due to the data collected when testing the energy output of Hexanol, the hypothesis should remain