Lab Report SL: study the energy of various fuels

[monkbear]

Hi I'm currently having my internal assessment for chemistry SL at the moment. The topic our teacher has given us is "study the energy of various fuels". My lab design is going to be about testing the HHV values of different states of hydrocarbons but my problem is that it uses a bomb calorimeter. Would I have to explain within the instructions how to use the bomb calorimeter? And is it even a good lab in your opinion?

[dessskris]

so this is design, right?

I don't know what bomb calorimeter is but google told me that it's apparently a quite sophisticated equipment.

do you have this at school? have you consulted with your teacher about the use of this tool? because my teacher doesn't want us to use any apparatus that we do not have at school in our design. but I do not know about your teacher. may want to check on that.

so you can probably know that I've never designed such experiment that uses sophisticated equipments. however one of my DCP&CE labs involved the use of spectrophotometer (which I think is sophisticated) and in the lab manual my teacher included how to use spectrophotometer on a separate page. that being said, you may need to do the same. but I do not know. maybe you don't need to because it's a design.

if I were you I'd rather ask my teacher.

[suggaplum]

Hi I'm currently having my internal assessment for chemistry SL at the moment. The topic our teacher has given us is "study the energy of various fuels". My lab design is going to be about testing the HHV values of different states of hydrocarbons but my problem is that it uses a bomb calorimeter. Would I have to explain within the instructions how to use the bomb calorimeter? And is it even a good lab in your opinion?

For chemistry, we don't have a bomb calorimeter so we just used the good old fashioned "heat-up-water-with-the-fuel-until-it-boils" method. However if you were to really use a bomb calorimeter, then you would have to note down the steps that you actually physically did. It seems to be a very sophisticated piece of equipment with a lengthy process. If this is a complete lab, D, DCP & CE then your CE part may end up scoring lower since it would be very hard for you to find ways in which you can improve your experiment, except random errors in measuring & calculation. However, if you used the method we used, then you would have a lot to say in the conclusion especially heat loss etc and you can talk about how a bomb calorimeter could be used instead as an improvement for your method.

However, I don't exactly know what your teacher wants, or if you have to use a bomb calorimeter so I really advise you to ask your teacher for more specific instructions. (Even though i know sometimes they just want you to go rogue and think of a lab yourself)

[Keel]

Hi I'm currently having my internal assessment for chemistry SL at the moment. The topic our teacher has given us is "study the energy of various fuels". My lab design is going to be about testing the HHV values of different states of hydrocarbons but my problem is that it uses a bomb calorimeter. Would I have to explain within the instructions how to use the bomb calorimeter? And is it even a good lab in your opinion?

For chemistry, we don't have a bomb calorimeter so we just used the good old fashioned "heat-up-water-with-the-fuel-until-it-boils" method. However if you were to really use a bomb calorimeter, then you would have to note down the steps that you actually physically did. It seems to be a very sophisticated piece of equipment with a lengthy process. If this is a complete lab, D, DCP & CE then your CE part may end up scoring lower since it would be very hard for you to find ways in which you can improve your experiment, except random errors in measuring & calculation. However, if you used the method we used, then you would have a lot to say in the conclusion especially heat loss etc and you can talk about how a bomb calorimeter could be used instead as an improvement for your method.

However, I don't exactly know what your teacher wants, or if you have to use a bomb calorimeter so I really advise you to ask your teacher for more specific instructions. (Even though i know sometimes they just want you to go rogue and think of a lab yourself)

I think the above poster answered your questions quite well. It is unlikely that your school has a bomb calorimeter, so you will need to make your own heat insulative calorimeter. People often ask, 'Do I need to explain how the piece of equipment works?' The answer is 'no'. In the last criteria for the Design, you are graded on 'developing a method for collection of data', thus you will often find people who spend hours on their IAs putting in background information on the experiment of method as score a low mark simply because they have not met the demands of the rubric. The key to scoring high in the method mark is that it should create a fair, safe and reasonably accurate experiment. The procedure should be explained in detail, like an idiot's guide to a five year old doing the experiment.

Having said this, if you do use a bomb calorimeter (even if your school does not own one due to this being just a design IA), incorporating it into your IA is not difficult. The bomb calorimeter is indeed a complex device, but it is easy to use. It is simply place the sample in, switch the oxygen supply on, and ignite; measure temperature change. However, as the above poster said, if this is a full IA which includes the DCP and CE, your evaluation in the CE will suffer as one of the nice things about this experiment is that it is horrendously inaccurate due to heat loss, much to talk about with the systematic errors. Overall, this should be a relatively straight forward IA. For more information on IAs: (see 'IA Guidelines.pdf')