Evaporation Sensation

Overview

Objectives/Goals This project investigates the effect of incandescent light bulb color upon the evaporating rate of rubbing alcohol. In my experiment, I took an incandescent light bulb, turned it on, dropped one drop of rubbing alcohol near the bulb, and observed the time required to evaporate the drop of alcohol. Methods/Materials Four different colored incandescent light bulbs (blue, green, red, white - all were 25 watts)were turned on one-at-a-time when I dropped the alcohol drop onto the index card, which was positioned 4 cm. from the bulb for each test. I used a stopwatch to time how long it took the alcohol drop to evaporate. I repeated the test 10 times with each light bulb. There were 40 tests altogether. Results The green incandescent light bulb took the longest time (4 minutes and 48 seconds) to evaporate the alcohol, the blue bulb was next (4 minutes and 26 seconds), then the white (3 minutes and 57 seconds), and the red bulb won at 3 minutes and 45 seconds. The red bulb evaporated the alcohol in the shortest amount of time. These were the average times for tests two through ten. Conclusions/Discussion My conclusion was that the red incandescent light bulb caused the rubbing alcohol to evaporate the fastest. The red incandescent light bulb had an average time of 3 minutes and 45 seconds.

Competition history

• CSEF 2009 Physics & Astronomy · Entry J1904

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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