Christian Castro, Joey Figueroa, Chris Estrella 802

Thermal Conductivity


Thermal Conductivity is the intense property of a material that indicates the ability to conduct heat. This is by particles striking each other and speeding up allowing heat to spread through the material. A material that is able to do this process is called a thermal conductor this is what we are testing in our project. If our household items that you can see even on your way to school are thermal conductors. Heat flows easily through materials that have high conductivity meaning that if our household items have high conductivity we will be seeing thermal conductivity in our objects. That is the goal and the reason we are carrying out this experiment.
Not every material can conduct heat, materials that resist the flow of heat are called poor conductors. These consist of plastic, wood, cork, fiberglass, and air. Sometimes when materials get hotter they increase in size this is called expansion this happens when solids, liquids, and gases are heated. The particles speed up and move apart, causing an increase in size. But when most solid, liquids, and gases lose heat there particles slow down and move closer together. This causes them to contract in size making them smaller. But just using our 5 senses is not the way we are going to see how much a materials heated. So what were using is a thermometer which is a commonly used instrument that is used to measure temperature. We are using Degree Fahrenheit (F) to measure the temperature of these items.


The way that we are going to test if our items have thermal conductivity is by boiling water at 120 degrees and pouring that water into a cup. Then filling another of the same cup with room temperature water. Then sticking a thermometer in each cup.Then we will stick our items into the hot water for 20 seconds then with tongs take the item out and insert them into our other cup of water. While we are doing this we will write down data like how much the temperature the water went up and note that down. Here are some pictures: