Insulation Experiment

Today we conducted our experiment around insulation. We each took an ice cube and we put it in our insulation made from different materials brought from home.

Here are some of the things we used:

We checked on the ice cubes again after lunch only to find that every one of them had completely melted!

So, we unlocked our ideas and thought about why our insulation didn't work as well as we thought it would. Here are some of our ideas:

• Our insulation didn't let any cold air in.
• They were under the lights which let out heat and so melted faster.
• They were wrapped really tight, which squeezes the ice.
• The cold air was not trapped in, it was being let out
• Warm air got trapped in when we wrapped them up.
• Some of our insulators were already warm when we put the ice in them.
• They weren't airtight so the warm air got in.

Then we thought about what we could change so it would work better if we were to do it again. This is what we though:

• To have something that could let in cold out and keep out the hot air.
• We could give the ice cube more room in our insulation.
• We could have used something cold to keep them in.
• We could have made our insulators airtight.
• Use proper insulation.
• We could put it somewhere dark.

One thing I would change if we did it again would be to check the ice at different points during the day so we could see how quickly the ice melts in each different insulator.

We saw that someone from Room 7 had used wall insulation and it kept the ice frozen for the whole school day!

We had some great questions being asked during the experiment. Tayla asked a particularly good question, "Why is something that is made to keep heat in our house (wall insulation) also really good at keeping in cold?"

Leave a comment if you can help us answer that question or if you have any other great questions about heat energy and insulation.

- Mr McC