Carbon Dioxide Gas and the Greenhouse Effect

Overview

Objectives/Goals The objective of our experiment was to determine if increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would cause increases in temperature. Methods/Materials Carbon dioxide gas was obtained from dry ice which was measured by the displacement of water when the dry ice sublimated as it warmed. Increasing amounts of carbon dioxide gas were sealed in four Erlenmeyer flasks. Another two flasks, one open and one closed, contained no added carbon dioxide gas. The temperature of the air in all six flasks was recorded at thirty second intervals for fifteen minutes during exposure to sunlight. Results After exposure to sunlight, the flasks with larger amounts of carbon dioxide gas had correspondingly higher temperatures when the temperatures stabilized. These temperatures were also higher than the flasks which had no added carbon dioxide. Conclusions/Discussion The results of the experiment supported our hypothesis that the flasks filled with larger amounts of carbon dioxide gas would produce correspondingly higher temperatures when exposed to sunlight, and would have higher temperatures than the flasks without added carbon dioxide. The results also support the theory that larger emissions of carbon dioxide could cause an increase in atmospheric temperature and therefore be a cause of global warming.

Competition history

• CSEF 2006 Earth Sciences/ Planetary Sciences/ Physical Environments · Entry S0607

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

• All Earth and Environmental Sciences projects
• CSEF Earth and Environmental Sciences projects
• Every CSEF 2006 project