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Student Name Professor Name Subject 8 May 2000 Light Bulb Lab Report The conducted experiment was designed to investigate the losses in the energy transfer process. According to the definition energy transfer is the process that occurs when one object emits energy and other object receives it. The first object is therefore a source of energy while the second object is the receiver. To model such process heat transmission was chosen because heat is the most common type of energy on the Earth and the amount of heat transferred can easily be measured by finding the change in the temperature of objects. Light bulb was used in this experiment as a source of energy. According to the empirical measurements, common incandescent light bulb with the filament wire converts to light only about 5-10% of electric energy that it consumes. The remaining 90-95% is converted to heat, as anyone may check by placing a hand near the working light bulb. Moreover, the amount of energy a light bulb produces may be easily measured. Any light bulb is marked with its power level that is measured in Watts. Regarding the fact that 1 Watt is equal to emitting 1 Joule per 1 second, it follows up that to find the amount of energy produced by the light bulb one should multiply its power level in Watts by the time it worked in seconds. Next, the bowl of water was used as the receiver of energy. The mass of water was calculated according to its volume (1g = 1 ml) and knowing the change in the temperature it is possible to find the amount of energy transmitted by multiplying the mass of water (in grams) by the change in temperature (in Celsius degrees) and by water heat capacity which is roughly 4 Joules per gram per degree Celsius. Thus, the experiment was set up as following: the light bulb was firmly fixed and placed in several centimeters above the bowl of water. It was switched on and the time during the bulb was working was measured with the stopwatch. The temperature of the water in the bowl was measured with the help of thermometer just before the bulb was turned on and just after it was turned off. The experiment was conducted

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two times. Light bulb and bowl were the same in both trials, but in second trial bulb was working two times longer. Such design of the experiment made it possible to find the amounts of energy emitted and consumed in both trials and though to calculate percentage of energy loss by subtracting the consumed amount from the emitted amount and dividing it by the latter. This percentage will indicate how much energy is lost due to heat dissipation to the air in the room. Since the conditions of two trials are very similar, it is expected that the percentage of energy loss will remain constant in both trials. Thus, such experiment may help to illustrate the existence of losses in energy transfer processes. According to the measurements that were made during the experiment, the power of the light bulb was 100W, the mass of water was 500g, bulb was working 180 seconds in the first trial and 360 seconds in the second trial and change of temperature was 11.7C in the first trial and 17.4C in the second trial. It results in 18,000J emitted with 23,500J consumed in the first trial and 36,000J produced with 34,800J consumed in the second trial. Surprisingly, in the first trial there is no energy loss but actually the energy gain of 5400J or 30%! According to the law of conservation of energy this gain should be attributed to some other source of energy rather than light bulb, which in our case is air. Indeed, the initial temperature of the water was roughly 22C, while the temperature in the room was 27C, which means that there was also transfer of heat energy between water and air. Therefore, the result of the second trial, which indicated the loss of 1200J (or 3.33%), should also be considered in terms of additional gain from hot air in the room. Thus, the conducted experiment did not reveal the stable rate of energy losses in heat transfer processes. However, it has shown that heat transfer processes in various systems should be investigated carefully as they may result in unexpected heat gains or losses.

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Works Cited Breithaupt, Jim. New Understanding Physics for Advanced Level. Nelson Thornes, 2000. Print.