Karsen+O

DETERMINING IF A TRIANGLE CAN MOVE ACROSS WATER USING SURFACE TENSION Karsen O. 2011-2012

ABSTRACT These experiments are to learn more about surface tension and if it can be used to power a small raft. In this experiment a small triangle was put on water and a liquid was dropped on the triangle and then if the triangle moved using the surface tension that the other liquid created on the water the distance was measured and when it started to move it was timed until it stopped. A side experiment was done to observe the densities of liquids on other liquids in a beaker. The syrup, detergent, and soap all sunk to the bottom of the beaker under the water, means that they are less dense than the water. The oil that was poured into the water is denser than the water so it sits on top of the water. They were left to settle on the surface and on the bottom of the water and then they were mixed for 30 seconds then observed to find that the soap and the detergent almost completely mixed into the water and the oil spread into little blobs on the surface of the water and then came back into larger blobs. An experiment was done to see what happened to soap, shampoo, detergent, and syrup when poured into oil. They were mixed, and were left to sit for 24hours then mixed again, the detergent and the soap mixed into the oil because letting them sit overnight allowed them soak in the oil making it part of it.

FURTHER EXPERIMENTS OR SUGGESTIONS What could be improved in this experiment was figuring more about surface tension before the experiment is conducted so it can be known more about what is happening. In future experiments that will be conducted will be telling more about surface tension and with different items (paperclip, paper, etc.)And see what those do when put on different liquids or water, how they rest on the surface. In the main experiment that was conducted major findings were found, those were that consumable products do not work when they were tried in the experiment. Other major findings and results in the other experiments are that all of the liquids that were used sunk to the bottom because they are denser than the water except the corn oil that was used.

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