Term 3 Week 5 Reflection

3E1 pupils did a SPA experiment on the 'Cooling Rate of Water in different containers'. The pupils used two different containers (styrofoam and glass beaker) to hold the same amount of boiling water and recorded the temperature at different time intervals. ( every one minute record one temperature). For the subsequent practical session, pupils would use a datalogger to record the temperature of napthalene as it cools down.

Learning Points

1. As the temperature of water drops rapidly after pouring from the electric kettle, pupils were instructed to set up the apparatus with the thermometer clamped on the retort stand before starting on the experiment.

2. Pupils were also instructed on drawing a table for collecting the temperature every minutes for a total of 5 minutes.

3. Pupils would familarise themselves with the use of electr0nic stopwatch before starting the recording of temperature drop.

Things to be improved further

As two containers are used in the experiment, it would be better for the temperature reading to be taken at the same time. At present, pupils were instructed to do separate recordings for two different containers. The reason is to allow pupils to observe the drop in temperature at the same time and understand which container is a poor conductor of heat.