Fire!

We've just completed our Calorimetry lab, in which we tried to determine how much energy was contained in a peanut. The object was to burn the peanut to release its energy, and collect that energy in another substance and changing its temperature. Then using an equation (see below), we could calculate how much energy was there. The equation was

Q = MCΔT

Where Q is the energy in joules (what we were looking for), C is the specific heet of the material collecting the heet (measured in J/g·°C), and ΔT is the change in temerpature of the material. For a list of the specific heets of several materials, go here.

We figured out that the amount of energy in a gram of peanut should be about 23,908.57 J, which, if you check out the flames below, you'll see is quite a bit of energy. Most of our values weren't that high, though, because much of the heat ended up escaping into the environment instead of being trapped in the material.

Soot from a burnt peanut provided Shania with some feline artistic inspiration!

These gentlemen found out that some peanuts required more coaxing to light than others...

We kept the window open to prevent the peantus from setting off the fire alarm. This created a breeze and necessitated some creative sheilding.

Various materials, such as the clay seen here, were used to try and funnel heet to the water for capture. Note the temperature probe used.