Kevin's+Lab

Imploding Cans

Research Question: How does the amount of water in a can affect how much volume remains inside an imploded can?

Hypothesis: The larger the amount of water in the can, the more volume the can will have after being crushed.

Manipulated Variable: The amount of water in the can

Responding Variable: The final volume of the can

Materials:
 * Aluminum Soda Cans
 * Bunsen Burner
 * Tripod
 * Iron Gauze
 * Tongs
 * Measuring Cylinder
 * Thermometer
 * Stopwatch
 * Water
 * Ice

Procedure: 1. Fill a can with 20 mL of water 2. Heat the can with a Bunsen burner until steam is visible for 10 seconds 3. Quickly grab the can with tongs and flip it 180° into a bucket of ice water at 10°C 4. Measure the volume of the can after it has been flipped out of the bucket 5. Repeat steps 1-4 for 6 trials, each time increasing the amount of water by 20 mL

Data Collection: The Volume of an Imploded Can
 * Amount of Water (±1 mL) || Volume of Can (±1 cm3) ||
 * 20 || 86 ||
 * 40 || 178 ||
 * 60 || 124 ||
 * 80 || 172 ||
 * 100 || 185 ||
 * 120 || 186 ||
 * 120 || 186 ||



Conclusion: During the experiment, an aluminum soda can filled with some water was heated until steam was visible for 10 seconds, then was flipped into a bucket of ice water at 10°C, when all of a sudden it imploded. This was because, when the water boiled inside the can, the water had reached the same atmospheric pressure as the surrounding air outside the can. When a can reaches boiling point, its molecules move so vigorously that they break apart, causing the liquid to become a gas, or in this case water vapor. When the can is quickly flipped 180°, the water vapor is kept inside, while the water passes to the hole. When inverting the can into the ice water, the sudden change in temperature causes the vapor to cool and condense into a liquid immediately. Because of the properties of matter, molecules in the gaseous state occupy higher volume than the same number of molecules in the liquid state. This is explained by the fact that molecules are spaced farther apart as a gas then a liquid. When heated, most of the can becomes filled with water vapor, but the sudden condensation of the vapor also causes an abrupt decrease in pressure. Thus, the can will shrink until the pressure on the inside of the can also matches the outside atmospheric pressure, or a balance is reached. Because the can doesn’t offer resistance to the outside pressure, it easily implodes or is crushed by the outside pressure. The can doesn’t implode further though because cold water enters from the hole in the can at the top.

For this experiment, the hypothesis that the larger the amount of water in the can, the less volume the can will have after being crushed was proven wrong during the experiment, because not only the results of the table, but the graph show a gradual upward slope, showing that the volume of the can only increased after being imploded as more water was placed in the can. This shows that as more water is added to the can, then the volume after the can has been imploded only grows greater.

During this experiment, several factors that could have made this test fairer could have been implemented. The first was the cleanliness of each soda can, since the remaining soda could have affected the volume of the can at the very beginning or how much the can would implode. Another factor was the actual inverting action of the experiment tester when flipping the can into the ice water. Sometimes, the amount of time to flip over the can could have been too great, causing the water vapor to slowly condense ahead of time, causing some errors in the results. Also, the amount in which the can was submerged could have remained constant to maintain fairness, but it wasn’t established ahead of time. Also, sometimes, the time for vapor to be released was not always precisely 10 seconds, with the times varying from 10.11 seconds to 10.64 seconds at times, causing the can to be filled with more water vapor then other trials. Also, the temperature of the ice water was not always constant during the experiment causing it to be too warm during some trials which could have provided error in the results. This could have been possible, because the change in temperature might not have been abrupt enough, causing the implosion to vary with different cans.