Coffee Mug Product Claim Verication Experiment

Question: Does the Contigo coffee mug keep the coffee hot like it says it does? Experiment Design: 1. Heat the liquid to between 170 degrees and 180 degrees fahrenheit (from web clip shown below). 2. Pour the liquid in the coffee mug. 3. Take and record the temperature in a table. 4. Seal the lid. 5. Remove the lid and take the temperature every 5 minutes for 4 hours. If the temperature falls below 125 degrees after 4 hours then the mug fails the test. Hypothesis: The mug will pass the test because companies can't advertise false claims.

 The graph of the data should look like this:

Equation:

 170.5 is the starting point. -4/7 is the slope. It says the temperature is decreasing 4 degrees every 7 minutes. Graph: The graph looks like a good t.

 Four Hour Test We didn't have time in class to run the test for four hours so we can use the equation to see what would happen at the four hour (240 minute) mark. Since that temperature doesn't make sense we have to look to see what we did wrong. Here is a temperature vs. time graph of hot water in an open mug. The line is not straight.

 This graph makes more sense because eventually the temperature of the water in the mug or coffee mug will stop at room temperature. With a straight line graph the line continues to go down past room temperature and into negative temperatures! Since we didn't have time for another test, we talked about what we could have done differently. We said that we shouldn't take the top off the mug to take the temperature. That lets out steam and heat and it cools the mug off quicker. The people that work for Contigo wouldn't do that in order to make their mug look good. They would seal it. Dr. A did another experiment at home and sealed the mug (we saw a picture) and took temperatures every minute for four hours. Here is the graph:

 AFter four hours the temperature was 124.9 degrees so we think that the mug does work.