hait-tem4

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Broad Question
Do different materials effect ice?

Specific Question
Does the content of the ice cube effect its melting rate?

Variables That Need To Be Controlled:
How we time the ice cubes, temperature of the room, the water amount, the amount of each substance.

Hypothesis
I hypothesize that the salt will effect the ice cubes melting time the most by reducing the melting rate.

Experimental Design
I will conduct my experiment at my house. I will have about 2 people. Also I will need at least 2 trials. I will definitely record my data on the computer program Microsoft Excel. Another thing I will do is take pictures as the experiment is taking place. And I will end up putting them on my wiki-page and on my display board.

Materials List

 * Water
 * Ash
 * Sand
 * Salt
 * Rocks
 * Oil
 * Ice cube tray
 * Stop Watch
 * 4 other people ( time keepers)
 * Freezer

Detailed Procedure
1) First you gather up all of your materials from the list above. 2) Fill the ice cube tray with 1 tablespoon of water for each ice cube slot. 3) Take all of the substances (ash, sand, salt, rocks, and oil) and measure 1 teaspoon of each and put the teaspoon of each substance in one of the ice cube slots with the tablespoon of water. 4) Put the ice cube tray back in the freezer for about 1 hour. 5) Take out the ice cube tray and pop out all the ice cubes. 6) Time the melting of each ice cube. Make sure you time the ice cube by content. (Ex. time all the ash ice cubes together) 7) Repeat steps 2-6 for 2 trials with all the substances (ash, sand, ect….) 8) Put all the data in the spread sheet. 9) Make a graph showing the data.

Background Research
In a block of ice, all the water molecules are glued together. When one adds heat to the outside of ice, the water molecules start falling off the outside of the pile, one layer at a time. Once they fall off, they swim around sticking together like mud. That's the wet, liquid water that the ice turned into, when it melted.When the molecules come free, they "use up" some of the shaking. Using up heat by melting keeps the rest of the ice cold. The ice stays cold inside even while the room around it is warm. So the rest of the ice sits there, cold, waiting for some more heat to drift over to it. When some heat comes near, the ice eats it up and melts a little more.

In order for a water molecule to freeze on the surface of the ice crystal it has to run into the ice crystal itself. The water temperature has to get colder in order for the water molecules to freeze. But even when water freezes it might look different but even when water is frozen to ice the water molecules never change

Elements and compounds can move from one physical state to another and not change. Oxygen (O2) as a gas still has the same properties as liquid oxygen. The liquid state is colder and denser but the molecules are still the same. Water is another example. The water is made up of two hydrogen (H) atoms and one oxygen (O) atom. It has the same molecular structure whether it is a gas, liquid, or solid. Although its physical state may change, its chemical state remains the same.

Data Table

 * Content || Trial 1 (mins) || Trial 2 (mins) ||
 * Ash || 90.49 || 110.22 ||
 * Salt || 33.06 || 41.5 ||
 * Sand || 96.04 || 101.05 ||
 * Oil || 62.15 || 66.53 ||
 * Rocks || 95.3 || 106.16 ||
 * Control || 51.41 || 53.15 ||

Conclusion
The original purpose of this experiment was to see if the different contents of the ice cubes affected the melting rate. The results of the experiment were not a significant as I thought but I still found that the salt ice cube had the shortest melting rate and rock ice cube had the longest melting rate. The salt ice cube had and average melting rate of 37.28 mins. The rock ice cube had an average melting rate of 100.73 mins.

Discussion
My hypothesis was that the salt ice cube would have the shortest melting rate. My results showed that the salt ice cube really did have the shortest average melting rate. The content of the ice cube did affect of the melting rate of the ice cube because the ice cubes all had a different rate of melting and no ice cube had the same times between the two trials. During the experiment I didn't come across and trends or pattern. I think the experiment went smoothly with some exceptions. They were when I was timing the melting rate the timers were having trouble effectively stopping when the ice cubes were done melting. So some of the data was off by one or two seconds. If I could redo the experiment I would make sure that the timers were acting properly and that I could time all of the ice cubes all together. An interesting thing that i could further investigate would be what ingredient in salt enhances the melting process of the ice.