Solar Energy Essay, Research Paper

Solar Energy

This experiment deals with the testing of solar energy and what material holds the greatest amount of heat. Solar energy is heat that the sun gives off. The materials used to determine what holds the heat the longest are rock, soil, water, and stone. The purpose of this project is to see what of the four materials hold the heat the longest. My hypothesis is that soil holds the heat or energy the longest is because soil is black. Black is the number one heat tracker.

The procedures I used in this experiment deal with how long a material can hold the heat the sun gives off and how long that material holds it. I got four thermometers and four cork plugs to see if water, soil, stone, and air could hold heat to see what material can keep the heat for solar energy.

Each of the painted black bottles were placed in the sun. The bottle filled with water hit a temperature of 106 degrees. The reason water got to be a 106 degrees is because water can be heated by a surrounding temperature and can be heated by the sun’s heat also. The bottle filled with soil got to be the highest temperature of all the bottles. It reached, 110 degrees at the highest point of the experiment. My thoughts on the reason it got to be so hot is that, since the bottles were black and the soil is black the temperature of the bottle would be more hotter. Black absorbs the greatest amount of the sun’s heat. The bottle filled with stone was measured to be the most coldest of all the four bottles, 100 degrees. I would think that stone would be the coldest because it is a solid and solids can’t hold heat as well as other materials can. The final and last bottle was filled with air. This bottle had just about the same temperature as water. This temperature got to be 105 degrees, one degree lower than water. Air can’t hold or store heat as well as the other three materials used in the experiment. Each of the four bottles were tested for four days and all the temperatures differed only slightly. The temperatures changed only by a couple degrees each day. The four thermometers I used in this project were twelve inches long and were filled with red ink, rather than mercury.

This project could help indicate what materials work best in homes as a form of harnessing the heat also. The choice of the four bottles would be soil. Soil is a suggestion on heating if you had no other options. Some people also build their homes out of soil and rock as a good form of heating.

The conclusion I came to during this report is that my hypothesis was correct. I said to myself which bottle will give off or store the most heat. Soil proved to be the material that holds the greatest amount of heat. The reason I went with soil is because I went on appearance. Soil had the darkest appearance and should absorb the most heat.