Essay/Term paper: Insulation

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Science Research Papers

Insulation


Introduction

The experimenter is testing on denim, cotton T-shirt material, wool
fabric, thermal underwear, polyester fabric, and a Ziplock bag with no insulator.
From research the experimenter learned that wool is a fine soft wavy hair that
forms all or part of the protective coat of a sheep. Since ancient times it was
harvested to provide clothing and is an important part in textile trade because
of its insulation. Woolen fabric is when the woolen system uses short or mixed
long and short fiber where no combing is done. It has a rough appearance and is
most suitable for blankets, overcoats, and tweeds. Denim which the experimenter
is also testing is the material used to make blue jeans and is currently one of
the world's most popular fabrics. It is fairly heavy and is made with a blue
cotton warp and a white cotton filling (Groilers, 1996). The thermal underwear
is duofold, with an outer layer made of 65% cotton, 25% wool, and 10% nylon, and
an inner layer made of 100% cotton.
It's the winter again and the weather is becoming colder. Each morning
many people wonder what to wear to stay as warm as possible, but they aren't
sure which material will keep them warmest. The experiment was chosen to see
which clothing insulator retains the most heat. "Insulation is material that
protects against heat, cold, electricity, or sound." (Science Encyclopedia,
1984). In this case the insulation will be protecting against a cold temperature.

The hypothesis is if denim, cotton T-shirt material, wool fabric,
polyester fabric, thermal underwear, and a Ziplock bag with out insulating
material are tested to see which one retains the most heat, then wool fabric
will retain the most heat because it holds an important place in today's textile
trade because of its good insulation and the fact that it comes from the
protective coat of sheep who need to stay warm and use that as their insulator.

Procedure

The first thing the experimenter does is fill the inside of five, gallon-sized
Ziplock bags with the insulation material so it is one centimeters thick all
around. Leave the sixth Ziplock bag empty because it will serve as the control
group. Then fasten the insulating materials to the inside of the gallon sized
Ziplock bag with adhesive tape.
Next the experimenter boils ten pints of tap water and let it cool until
(using the candy thermometer) the temperature drops to 49 degrees Celsius. Then
immediately fill each of the six canning jars with equal amounts of the water.
Immediately after that drop a regular thermometer into each jar, and cap it
tightly and as quick as you can. Put the six jars into the six Ziplock bags and
seal them. Then put the six jars which are inside the Ziplock bags in the
refrigerator for two hours and take the temperature readings every 15 minutes.
Repeat all these steps two more times. Then look and compare your readings and
note how they changed over time and graph your data and make a conclusion.

Results

The purpose of this experiment was to find the effect of different forms
of insulation on how much heat each type retains to show the best insulators for
keeping the human body warm. The mean had thermal underwear retaining the most
heat at the end of the two hours. The mean temperatures at the end of the two
hours were denim 27 degrees Celsius, cotton T-shirt material 27, wool fabric 28,
thermal underwear 28.67, polyester fabric 27.33, and no insulation 19.67 degrees
Celsius. The range at the end of two hours was Denim had a range of zero,
Cotton T-shirt material had two, Wool Fabric zero, Thermal Underwear three,
Polyester Fabric had one, no insulation had a range of one. The range was not
big, so the experiment was accurate. Basically the experiment showed most
clothing insulations retained near the same amount of heat. Thermal underwear
retained the most heat by an average of about one degree over the other
insulations. Another major result was all insulations retain much more heat
than no insulation.

Data Table

Conclusion

The purpose of this experiment was to find the effect of different forms
of insulation on how much heat each type retains to show the best insulators for
keeping the human body warm. The hypothesis is if denim, cotton T-shirt
material, wool fabric, polyester fabric, thermal underwear, and a Ziplock bag
with out insulating material are tested to see which one retains the most heat,
then wool fabric will retain the most heat because it holds an important place
in today's textile trade because of its good insulation and the fact that it
comes from the protective coat of sheep who need to stay warm and use that as
their insulator. The hypothesis was not supported because wool fabric had an
average of two-thirds of a degree Celsius less than thermal underwear at the end
of the two hours of testing. Thermal Underwear retained more heat because it
was designed to keep you as warm as possible. Another major result was all the
insulations were around the same temperature (27-28.67 degrees Celsius) at the
end of two hours of testing and the bag without insulation was only 19 degrees
Celsius. The experimenter thinks this is because all clothes has insulation as
a high priority and thermal underwear has insulation as its highest priority.
The experimenter thinks an experimental error is he always took the temperatures
in the same order. The difference in seconds could change the data by a degree.
The experimenter could improve this by rotating or making the measuring order
randomly. Other areas of study can be the effect of the amount of layers of
insulation on how much heat is retained.

Bibliography

______. "Wool". Word Search. Groliers. 1995. ______. "Cotton". Netscape.
1995. Bochinski, Julianne, Science Fair Projects, Wiley Science Editions, New
York,
1991