Answer 1:
That sounds like a fantastic project! Make sure
you wear safety glasses because it would really
hurt to get vinegar in your eye. I think three
antacids is a good number to test. I can
think of two ways to graph the results. The
easiest is to simply time how long it takes for
each antacid to neutralize the vinegar solution
and then make a bar graph showing the time for
each one. If it doesn't change color, it means you
used too much vinegar/not enough antacid. Even if
you want to do the more complicated experiment, I
would do this one first to make sure everything is
working properly. If you want to do
something more complicated, you could try to
actually estimate the pH based on the color of the
cabbage juice. Then you could write down how long
it takes to change to each pH. This might be
difficult because the color change will be
gradual.To do the second experiment, you need to
know which color goes with which pH.It looks
like: color | pH |
---|
red | 2 | purple |
4 | blue-violet |
7 |
These website have
pictures of what red cabbage juice looks like at
different pH levels so they might help in
determining this. click
here click
here click
hereThen you can graph pH versus time for
each antacid. Household vinegar should start
around a pH of 2.5 to 3.5 and hopefully if you use
enough antacid, it will be neutralized to a pH of
about 7. As for the report, it should
include something similar to the following
sections: Introduction,
Question/Hypothesis, Materials and
Methods, Data and Results, and
Conclusion. The introduction should explain
essentially what you explained in youre-mail. You
should explain what antacids are, what they do,
and why you want to test them. In the
hypothesis section, you should include your
question: Which antacid neutralizes acid fastest?
and a hypothesis like "I think Tums will work the
fastest" or "I think it will take 10 minutes for
the antacids to neutralize acid." You could also
explain why you are making that
hypothesis. In the Materials and Methods
section you should include a list of all of the
materials you used, and also a list of the steps
you performed for the experiment. Explain how you
extracted the cabbage juice.Explain how you made
the vinegar solutions. How much vinegar did you
use? How much antacid did you use? etc. In
the Data and Results section, you should have your
graph of your results and also any observations
about the experiment. In the conclusion,
discuss what the results were and how they relate
to your hypothesis. What did you learn from doing
the experiment? Was there anything
unexpected? If you have more questions, feel
free to e-mail me again. I am happy to help as
much as I can. Click Here to return to the search form.
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