Hand-Warmer Design Challenge
The objective of this challenge was to create a hand-warmer prototype that costed as little as possible to create, used safe chemicals, and was environmentally safe to sell for the San Marin community. There were many steps to the final product. First we found the calorimeter constant through tests of mixing cold and hot water. After finding the calorimeter constant, we tested various salts: Ammonium Nitrate, Lithium Chloride, and Sodium Carbonate. With that data we calculated the enthalpy of each salt. From our results, we decided to go with Lithium Chloride and water. After that, we calculated the costs for Lithium Chloride as well as the materials needed in order to create our hand-warmer.
Below is our presentation displaying our data tables, pictures of our prototypes, and costs of the hand-warmer.
Below is our presentation displaying our data tables, pictures of our prototypes, and costs of the hand-warmer.
Reflection
Two things that went smoothly in our project was the experiments and the calculations. Two things that didn't go as smoothly was our communication and presentation. I felt like we should have prepared more for our presentation and researched the science behind it further. We could have further explained the reactions happening in our hand warmer. Also I think that we didn't communicate with each other well which led to some miscommunication and mishaps such as changing our salt in our prototype. In future projects, I will make sure that everyone in the group is on board and knows what is going on.