Susan Paradee's Blog: Hello, I am new to blogging

The four materials I tested in this week’s experiment were paper, plastic wrap, aluminum foil, and a hot pad. The results were a bit surprising to me. I had guessed that the hot pad and the paper would perform much lower than the plastic and aluminum foil. Although the aluminum foil did keep the water the hottest, the difference between the four experiments was a matter of a few degrees. I was surprised by this outcome. I would have guessed that the difference between the aluminum foil and the paper would have been much greater. What I learned from this experiment is that cotton does insulate, however, it would not keep the liquid warm as long. The experiment was only conducted once so if I was to do this in the classroom I would have them do the experiment a couple of times and average the scores together. This would allow for a more accurate reading. Students would be divided into groups and given different types of containers such as styrofoam cups, metal cans, plastic cups and ceramic mugs to work with. It would be fun to compare the results after the experiment to see if the container had anything to do with the outcome. This is a fun experiment that would be easy to reproduce in the classroom.