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What Materials will I need to test the fastest way to heat fizzing water?
Question Date: 2011-10-24
Answer 1:

Let's break the problem down to figure out what exactly it is we want, then look at how to isolate and test them.

Essentially it sounds like you want to know what procedure will raise the temperature of some amount of fizzy water in the least amount of time. *Don't forget - you will need to control for the total amount of water in each experiment so that your comparisons are fair*.

From this description we see that we'll need something to measure temperature and time. We also need a heat source and a container that will conduct heat well enough to let us heat the sample while holding it!

A cooking thermometer and stopwatch are all you should need to measure time and temperature. For the latter part, well, that's the point of the experiment: what container/heating mechanism will heat fizzy water the fastest?

I'll give you a little bump on the last point - the two important aspects are heat conductivity (how fast does this thing get hot when you put it over a flame?) and surface area (how much of the hot thing is in contact with the water?)

I would start by testing a pot and a saucepan made from the same material. You'll also want to make sure you use enough water so that your experiment lasts long enough to collect many data points (the temperature every minute, for example).

Hope this helps!


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