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How Does the Surface Area to Volume Ratio Affect Heat Loss in Organisms?

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Biology Lab Report
BY:
Michael Ryan Pranata 11C |

Background: As heat is a form of thermal energy, they tend to have the behavior of reaching a thermal equilibrium. This means that when two bodies of different temperatures come in contact with each other, the hotter ones will transfer heat particles to the body with a colder temperature, with an aim to reach this “thermal equilibrium”, whatever the temperature may be. The larger the surface area, means there can be more “paths” from the sides of the body that are capable of releasing this heat particles, and reaching thermal equilibrium faster. This is what happens when a hotter body is subjected to a colder one.
Research Question:
How does the surface area to volume ratio …show more content…

We observe the temperature of the four different flasks starting from the equal initial temperatures, every ten seconds for one samples all the way to three minutes. From the data observed, the average rate of heat loss can be derived. This is done by taking the initial and final temperature and dividing them by the number of seconds (18x as the total number of seconds is 180 and interval of 10 secs).

Controlled: Initial temperature, type of insulation, type of flasks, room temperature, time.

1. We’ve decided 77⁰C as our initial temperature for every trial. We’ve kept the initial temperature equal for each trial as this would give us fair and reliable results. If the initial temperatures were kept different, therefore the data provided will be somewhat unreliable. This is also because as the temperatures are higher, the rate of heat loss would be faster, as compared to when the initial temperatures are lower. This would again support the unreliability of the data we would observe.

2. The type of insulation that we’ve chosen is the cotton, approximately with the same thickness for each flask. They will be changed for every trial, because for each trial, as the heat escapes from the sides of the flask in the form of water vapor, it comes in contact with the cotton, thus making it moist, and changes the capacity of the cotton to insulate. We have decided to

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