Surface Tension Lab

Purpose: Design an investigation that will determine the unknown liquid based on
observations of known liquids.

Background Research: Biology text book, Chapter 2.2

Variables: Independent Substance

Dependent - # of drops

Hypothesis: Not required for this lab

Materials: (fill in on your own - columns not paragraph form)

pipettes

pennies

Procedure: (numbered steps, very detailed)

Data:

Raw Data:

Quantitative

Substance Water Oil Methanol Acetone Glycerin

# Drops

Unknown # _____ - # of drops _______

Qualitative

Substance Color Odor Consistency

Water
Oil
Methanol
Acetone
Glycerin
 Processed Data:

Sample Calculation: Class average of Oil

(28+16+19+28+24+23)/6 = 23.0

Class Average Data:

Substance Water Oil Methanol Acetone Glycerin

# Drops 31.7 23.0 21.4 20.0 32.3

Graph: Not required for this lab

Conclusion:

(What was your unknown? cite your data to support)

Evaluation:

-Identify at least one source of error and describe how it might have impacted your
data.

-How could you improve your method?

-How reliable is your method and your data?

-Describe one other possible experiment you could do to learn more about surface
tension.