Candle in a Jar
The Candle in a Jar experiment is the official last project of our chemistry class. This experiment was a straightforward experiment we all executed in partners of two. The experiment consisted of basic household items such as a birthday candle, a ball of clay, a paper bowl, water, some matches, and a glass flask/beaker. We started by taking the candle and placing it on a small piece of clay and filling the paper bowl with about an inch of water. Then, taking the candle and clay, we placed them inside the water. The next step was taking a match and lighting the candle and waiting around 5-10 seconds in order for the flame to reach its highest capacity. The final step was taking the glass flask and placing it over the flame …show more content…
After observing the reaction take place, our job as partners was to figure out the best reasoning for the reaction and why it occurred. We got to choose from three separate explanations and reasoning. In order to figure out what explanation made more sense, we conducted a series of experiments revolving around the same experiment in order to figure out what explanation made the most sense on why the water went inside the beaker. We had the opportunity to test out many different experiments in class but time was an issue and we only got to test three. These were the multiple candles lab, the heated flask, and the Amount of CO2 in the water experiments and these three labs answered different parts of the question. After all of this, I believe that the best explanation for the rise of the water into the flask would be explanation #2 since it says that when the candle is lit, it heats up the air inside the beaker before extinguishing itself. This causes the air pressure inside the flask to go up rapidly, but as soon as the flame goes down, so does the temperature bringing the pressure down also. This causes the air pressure outside the beaker to be higher than what’s inside the beaker and after some time the outside pressure pushes water up to the beaker to even …show more content…
This experiment was conducted in order to find out if Explanation #2 was correct since the purpose of this lab was to increase the temperature with more candles. As we suspected, more candles equalled more water in the flask after every test. We tested the candles by adding one each time and we did this for 6 total candles. We also changed the flask from a short triangular shaped one to a long glass cylinder to more accurately measure the height of the water inside. With every candle added, the flame grew larger and so did the amount of water inside the flask. We found out that after every candle the water grew half an inch every time. This was caused by the change in temperature and also the decrease in pressure inside the flask. The more candles that were used in the experiment, the higher the air pressure would later form inside the beaker. When the temperature decreased, the air pressure did too, creating and unequal difference in air pressure from inside the beaker and outside the beaker. Furthermore, the change in number of candles greatens the amount of air pressure after the candles go out which causes more water to go inside the flask. Just like explanation #2 said, this experiment supports it exactly since the number of candles and temperature does affect the air pressure greatly in this
The Candle in a Jar experiment is the official last project of our chemistry class. This experiment was a straightforward experiment we all executed in partners of two. The experiment consisted of basic household items such as a birthday candle, a ball of clay, a paper bowl, water, some matches, and a glass flask/beaker. We started by taking the candle and placing it on a small piece of clay and filling the paper bowl with about an inch of water. Then, taking the candle and clay, we placed them inside the water. The next step was taking a match and lighting the candle and waiting around 5-10 seconds in order for the flame to reach its highest capacity. The final step was taking the glass flask and placing it over the flame …show more content…
After observing the reaction take place, our job as partners was to figure out the best reasoning for the reaction and why it occurred. We got to choose from three separate explanations and reasoning. In order to figure out what explanation made more sense, we conducted a series of experiments revolving around the same experiment in order to figure out what explanation made the most sense on why the water went inside the beaker. We had the opportunity to test out many different experiments in class but time was an issue and we only got to test three. These were the multiple candles lab, the heated flask, and the Amount of CO2 in the water experiments and these three labs answered different parts of the question. After all of this, I believe that the best explanation for the rise of the water into the flask would be explanation #2 since it says that when the candle is lit, it heats up the air inside the beaker before extinguishing itself. This causes the air pressure inside the flask to go up rapidly, but as soon as the flame goes down, so does the temperature bringing the pressure down also. This causes the air pressure outside the beaker to be higher than what’s inside the beaker and after some time the outside pressure pushes water up to the beaker to even …show more content…
This experiment was conducted in order to find out if Explanation #2 was correct since the purpose of this lab was to increase the temperature with more candles. As we suspected, more candles equalled more water in the flask after every test. We tested the candles by adding one each time and we did this for 6 total candles. We also changed the flask from a short triangular shaped one to a long glass cylinder to more accurately measure the height of the water inside. With every candle added, the flame grew larger and so did the amount of water inside the flask. We found out that after every candle the water grew half an inch every time. This was caused by the change in temperature and also the decrease in pressure inside the flask. The more candles that were used in the experiment, the higher the air pressure would later form inside the beaker. When the temperature decreased, the air pressure did too, creating and unequal difference in air pressure from inside the beaker and outside the beaker. Furthermore, the change in number of candles greatens the amount of air pressure after the candles go out which causes more water to go inside the flask. Just like explanation #2 said, this experiment supports it exactly since the number of candles and temperature does affect the air pressure greatly in this