Ji, Mary

8East, Science

April 8, 2003

Lab Report – Solar Collector Experiment

Introduction and Hypothesis – In this experiment, we are trying to determine if a Black Base with foil would collect more energy then a Black Base without foil. I predict that the Black Base will collect more solar energy because it is a kind of metal which can probably attract more light than the Black Base with no foil. Overall, I predict that the Black Base with foil and the Black Base without will get to a close temperature because there’s mainly no difference besides the fact that one has a foil covering it.

Materials –

2 Black Base Solar Collectors

2 Thermometers

1 Stopwatch

1 Playground

1 sheet of foil

Procedure –

- Go to a place that have sun directly pointing on you [a playground would work]

- Get one Black Base Solar Collector and cover it with foil on the plastic cover.

- Place one thermometer on the top of the foil inside the plastic cover and place the other thermometer on the inside of the plastic cover upright.

- Take down starting temperature of each Black Base – with and without foil

- Start the stopwatch and stop every 5 minutes and take down the temperature for each – with and without foil

- Stop around 20 minutes [that’s how long we took for our experiment]

Data Table –

Minutes	Black Base with Foil			Black Base without Foil
	Temperature	Final Temperature	Change in Temperature	Temperature	Final Temperature	Change in Temperature
0	26 ^o c	41 ^o c	15 ^o c	30 ^o c	40 ^o c	10 ^o c
5	41 ^o c	47 ^o c	6 ^o c	40 ^o c	39 ^o c	-1 ^o c
10	47 ^o c	43 ^o c	-4 ^o c	39 ^o c	35 ^o c	-4 ^o c
15	43 ^o c	41 ^o c	-2 ^o c	35 ^o c	36 ^o c	1 ^o c

This table shows you that the Black Base with foil increased first by 5^o c more than the Black Base without foil so it’s showing you that the foil was capturing in more energy than the Black Base without foil. This also proves to you that there is a flaw in the result because as I learned in science class, there are problems with how we do the experiment so that’s why I think our experiment is increasing and decreasing in change in temperature.

Energy, Light and Heat –

The energy is getting transferred out of the Black Base with foil because the energy is bouncing back out and just like a mirror, the energy is getting absorb and reflecting back out again, and in the same situation with a mirror, if you shine light on it, the light reflects and bounces back the opposite direction, which shows the heat getting absorbed and then releasing back out into the atmosphere again. Energy transfer appears in many forms such as the heat being absorbed and then it reflects out the energy is transferring from inside of the solar collector back out to the environment which shows how much heat absorption it really take in.

Data Analysis –

The Black Base without foil clearly proves that it captures more solar energy than a Black Base with foil because mainly, the foil reflects the light and causes it to bounce back out which prevents the solar energy from being captured, while on the other hand, the Black Base is a darker color which is a proven theory that darker colors capture more heat energy. This graph below shows you just how including one more variable affect the outcome, and in this case, the Black Base with foil seems to be increasing with the Black Base during the 5 minute period, but while around the 15 minute period, when the Black Base without foil started increasing, the Black Base with foil is decreasing probably because of how much energy is captured already inside which reflects other solar energy from being able to be captured, and instead of being captured, it’s being directly reflecting to the outside.

This graph show you the Black Base is capturing more solar energy because it’s rising and not decreasing like the Black Base with foil.

Conclusions/Errors –

You conclusions explain what you learned from this experiment, using evidence from the data you presented

From this experiment I clearly learned that even though foil is a type of metal, it like any other metal reflects and bounces of energy and probably, this is like how sound waves bounce off objects. Since the foil reflects energy, that’s why the Black Base has a higher overall temperature and since the heat can be absorbed, it also affects how and when the foil reflects the light because in our graph, it shows that it’s increasing both at a certain time, but at a time, one decreases while the other increase probably because of how the energy is being pushed out again. Foil reflects which is why the foil have been increasing and decreasing. The types of flaws that might have occurred was when we had to get up and move the experiment, and I would have predicted that if we haven’t have moved, the overall temperatures wouldn’t have changed that greatly. You can tell which Base or Variables capture more solar energy by the amount of increase and the amount of downfall such as how much is decreasing. You can also notice that when foil reflects it’s also a comparison to how a wall bounces back the sound wave which is related to this comparison.