Sunny, with a high near 75. Windy, with a northwest wind 21 to 25 mph, with gusts as high as 37 mph.
Tonight
Mostly clear, with a low around 53. Breezy, with a northwest wind 13 to 18 mph becoming west northwest 6 to 11 mph after midnight. Winds could gust as high as 29 mph.
Friday
Sunny, with a high near 86. South southwest wind 6 to 11 mph increasing to 12 to 17 mph in the afternoon. Winds could gust as high as 28 mph.
Brieann pays close attention to the flaming peanut!
Which nut has more calories:
roasted peanuts or roasted walnuts? The chemistry students were
recently asked this same question and completed a lab to find out.
Using a homemade calorimeter setup, the lab partners lit a nut on
fire and observed how much energy was released. They did this by
finding the temperature change of the water in the flask above.
They did three trials for each nut to get a sufficient sample size.
By the end of the class period, the lab was full of floating carbon
pieces and burnt nut smell!
Teamwork--Justine watches for temperature change while the Justin makes sure the nuts stays ignited.
Jessica and Breanna wait patiently for the changes to occur.
Teamwork--Justine watches for temperature change while the Justin makes sure the nuts stays ignited.
The students then
calculated, per gram, how many calories each type of nut held
(since the definition of a calorie is the amount of energy needed
to raise 1 g of water 1º Celsius). The students had to take into
consideration that product labels use the nutritional term
“Calorie” (with a capital ‘C’). A Calorie is equal to 1000 calories
(scientific unit) or 1 kilocalorie.
After their calculations had been
done, they compared their results to the nuts’ product label to
check for accuracy. Their numbers varied, but all showed lower
calorie levels than the product labels. Students hypothesized that
heat energy may have been lost from the set-up to the environment
and that a more scientific set-up may reduce the
difference.
