Make your own lab

  MAKE YOUR OWN LAB: Water and Alka Seltzer Tablet
Guiding Question: Does the temperature of the water mixed with an Alka-Seltzer tablet effect the amount of energy produced from the reaction?

Background Information:  The reaction of Alka Seltzer and Water is practically that of baking soda and vinegar which starts with the sodium bicarbonate is a solid form and the vinegar in a liquid form. When baking soda and vinegar react with the acetic acid (HC2H3O2) which is in the vinegar, it reacts with the sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3) which is baking soda. They come together to form carbonic acid and this produces Carbon Dioxide gas, which in our experiment will then pressurize.

Hypothesis: We believe that the heated mixture will make the canister jump quicker than the mixture that is non-heated; this is because we believe that with a heated mixture produces more energy on top of the energy already produced.

Variables: The independent variable or manipulated variable is the temperature of the water, the dependant variable or the responding variable is the amount of energy produced in the end and then the controlled variable will be the amount of Alka Seltzer Tablets and Water

Materials:

·          Water

·          Alka Seltzer Tablet

·          Film Canister “Steve Spangler Science©”

·          Match/ Heat

·          Safety Goggles

·          Timer/Stopwatch

·          Freezer

Safety Procedures:

• Be careful when handling the heat, to heat up the water.
• Do not consume anything that is part of the experiment!
• Wear the safety goggles so that when the cap pops off, it does not fly into someone’s eye

Procedure:

1.     Take one “test tube” film canister and fill it with room-temperature water ¼ of the canister filled.

2.     Then take 1 Alka Seltzer tablet and insert it into the film canister. 

3.     Put the cap back onto the film canister, shake and then start the timer.

4.     When the cap pops off then stop the timer and record your observations.

5.     Take the same amount of water and heat it up.

6.     Pour the heated water inside the canister and add 1 Alka Seltzer tablet, shake and put the cap back on.

7.     Start the timer again and wait till the cap pops off.

8.     Record you observations.

9.     For the last test you must take the set amount of water and chill that in the freezer, for long enough so that the temperature change is noticeable yet it must not freeze completely!

10.   Take the chilled water and pour it into the film canister, insert an Alka Seltzer tablet and shake, start the timer.

11.   When the top pops off stop the timer and record your observations.

12.   When finished draw your conclusions and answer your guiding question.

Temperature	Time	Observations
Chilled	60 seconds	Takes a long time to pop
Heated	1 second	The reaction is so quick you can almost not get the cap on in time
Room Temperature	10 seconds	After the reaction the canister seems like that it will not pop yet after waiting it does

Conclusion: Our guiding question in this experiment was, “Does the temperature of the water mixed with an Alka-Seltzer tablet effect the speed of the reaction?” the hypotheses I came up with was, “I believe that the heated mixture will make the canister jump quicker than the mixture that is non-heated; this is because we believe that with a heated mixture produces more energy on top of the energy already produced.” Looking at our data that we collected during our experiment we can see that the heated water caused the quickest reaction. To do this we used a stopwatch to see how quickly the cap would pop off. The heated mixture made the cap pop off faster than the other temperatures. Why did this happen though? Well, my conclusion was that when heating up the water the particles start to move quicker, buzzing faster, and more energy is produced to start with. So, when you add the Alka Seltzer tablet there is even more energy added so the pressure builds up faster and makes the cap pop of faster than the other mixtures with different temperatures.

Further Inquiry: For this experiment we had an original plan to do a car that was powered by the energy made with the reaction of vinegar and baking soda (which has a very similar reaction to Alka Seltzer and water) yet it did not work because there was not enough power to make the car move. So we had to remodel our experiment so that we could actually have some data to record. So we made a new lab about the speed of the reactions and the amount of energy. If we had to do this lab again, I would do it so that the surround temperature is more stable, and so that there when closing the cap the cap is closed at the same time each experiment. I would have made the surrounding environment more stable.