Crazy Calorimetry, Calories Consumed by You

Overview

Objectives/Goals Through this project I can demonstrate how food is being burned and stored in my body. I used a calorimeter in this demonstration to calculate the food I burned and the heat it gave off. I constructed this calorimeter by using a simple aluminum can, an insulator/holder, water, a thermometer, and basic chopped foods. I placed a fixed amount of water in the can, placed the insulator over it and stuck the thermometer through, and read the temperature. I burned an exact amount of chopped food, with the calorimeter over it, and read the temperature. Then by knowing the two temperatures, subtract them to find the difference in temp. I calculated the amount of Calories per gram I burned and then compared my results to the labeled calories in the product. Conclusions/Discussion In this project I realized that there were some sources of error. For example, while burning the food, some of the food remained unburned. This could have been the reason of the difference between the two data. Another example of why the results differed may have been due to the loss of heat when the sample was removed to be relit. The construction of the calorimeter was made with inexpensive items so that this project could be easily reproduced. This made the results some what inaccurate but to try and solve this problem of inaccuracy a thick insulation was put on the calorimeter. Foods that were high carbohydrates such as the cereal, were demonstrated in this experiment, to have less calories per gram than foods with more fats and oils such as peanuts and sunflower seeds.

Competition history

• CSEF 2006 Physics & Astronomy · Entry J1502

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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