BOILING STONES DISCUSSION

1a) What method of heat transfer did you observe that transferred heat from one water molecule to another water
molecule throughout the water? (Do not look at the initial change in temperature, instead look at how heat was
dispersed throughout the liquid.)

1b) What evidence can you supply to support your decision? Explain how heat is transferred (or moves) within the
method which you chose.

2) Using physics terminology found among your course resources, explain what you think caused the rocks to crack?
What is the SPECIFIC term for this occurrence? So, identify the term, define it, and show how it applies in this video.
hint: this term is in the powerpoint file and in your textbook.

3) Comment upon entries of 2 other students (see notes in rubric on how your comments are scored.)

4) Check back in a few days to reply to comments others left for you

1. By looking at how the heat was dispersed throughout the water I observed that the heat
transfer used was Conduction.
1b. Stones are actually considered great conductors of heat because of how speedily they
transfer the heat itself. As the video mentions, boiling stones was actually a successful and
handy method for Native Americans to use while cooking many, many years ago. By
definition, Conduction is the transfer of thermal energy by means of the movement of
particles in a material. So, in this case the stones are being heated by use of fire in which
thermal energy is transferring from the fire to the stones making them extremely hot, hot
enough that after only replacing the hot stones in water once, the water is a boiling
temperature, hot enough that as I mentioned earlier, people used this method to cook meals.
2. Due to the high heating process that these rocks experienced that some small cracks were
already made because of how high the temperature of the fire was because heating the
rocks makes them more fragile to chip and break away. But to explain the actual cracking
of these rocks we could say the physicality of the rock has undergone such stress so it
withers due to weathering. These stones are pretty much experiencing thermal expansion
and as the heat increases the particles are moving faster and faster and farther apart, but
once cooled at such a quick impact there contraction causes breakage.