Thermal Expansion

  This week in science club we learned about thermal expansion.  We learned that thermal energy causes thermal expansion when it accelerates the particles' speed causing them to expand, thus thermal expansion is caused.

  To prove this we conducted 5 experiments.  1 of my favorites was what I like to call the explosion bottle.  How it worked was we put ethyl alcohol in a (empty) water container, shook it around a little bit, and dropped a match inside.  The flame caused the air and itself to expand making air shoot out.


dropping the match in the container

  Another one of my favorites was the grill popper experiment.  How we did this, we used a grill lighter that made electricity when you pressed the button on the bottom.  On the end there was a cap of a film canister glued on.  Using this we put on a film canister with ethyl alcohol in it, aimed it, then pressed the button.   The electricity heated the ethyl alcohol causing air to expand forcing the container off.  This made a huge POP!




                   -Jordan