Heat Transfer Guided Inquiry

Cups, with "HOT" water.

This week I conducted an experiment to find out which material would insulate the mug of hot water the best.  I decided to use tin foil, wax paper, plastic wrap and a t-shirt.  The first three were materials I use in the kitchen and wanted to see which worked best for keeping something warm.  I decided on the t-shirt just because I thought it would be interesting to see it's heat retention properties and we use it for clothing to stay warm.  After putting hot water in identical mugs and then covering the mugs with the 4 materials as lids, I waited 30 minutes to then measure the temperature of the water inside.  I then compared my before and after temperatures and determined the temperature changes.  I ran three trials of my experiment before I was comfortable with my data's results.  I wanted to verify my findings were right because my first trial produced interesting results.

Materials Used

Predictions and data from first two trials.

The t-shirt actually was the best in 2 of the 3 trials and had the best average temperature loss.  It kept the water the hottest out of the 4 materials.  I was very shocked because I thought it would be the worst of the all.  After reading about heat transfer, I realized the reason the t-shirt worked the best because it had lots of spaces.  Space is a poor conductor of heat because it increases the space that the molecules have to move to transfer the heat.  It had lots of space and therefore was a poor conductor of heat, and trapped more heat inside than it let out. 

Trial three's data and average temperature change chart

Out of the 3 kitchen materials, the tin foil, plastic wrap and wax paper, the tin foil was best, followed by the wax paper and lastly the plastic wrap.  The tin foil was much better than the other two.  The wax out performed the plastic which was interesting to me.  The picture above shows the third trial's data plus the average temperature change chart. 





I would like to run this experiment with liquids of different densities.  I think if I used a thick gravy the results might have been different.  Because the gravy is denser than the water, it would probably retain heat on its own better, and then the covers might not play as large of a role as they did in the water experiment.  I would even try other materials like a hamburger or pasta.  Again, maybe the density of the object would affect the outcomes.