Glow Stick Experiment

Problem:

Are glow sticks affected by the temperature they are surrounded in? If so, how?

Hypothesis:

 When the glow stick is heated up or cooled down, the glow stick chemical reaction will be muffled and the glow stick will extinguish faster and therefore burn out.

Experimental Design:

Materials:

Hot Plate

Fridge

6 Glow sticks

Heating element

Pot lid

Pliers/insulated clamps

Variables:

CV

Temperature of pot/ water in the pot

What color the glow stick is

Where the glow stick is positioned in the pot

IV

Size of pot

Type of glow stick

Size of glow stick

Size and shape of heating element

DV

How long the glow stick lasts

Procedure:

In order to properly test our hypothesis we set up two hot plates at varying temperatures, along with 4 online stopwatches and the glow sticks. There would be one glow stick per stopwatch. In order to be there when the glow sticks extinguished, we needed to start the experiment right when we got to school. We put water in the hot plates and let them sit for a while to ensure a constant temperature as to not create more variables. As we broke each glow stick, we started the stopwatch and put them in their assigned location. We would then check on the glow sticks every fifteen minutes. As each glow stick extinguished, we would stop the timer and record the time.

Observations

When all the glow sticks had extinguished, we observed that the hotter the temperature, the faster the glow sticks went out. For example, the 87 degree Celsius glow stick lasted only two and a half hours whereas the room temperature went out at seven and a half hours. The glow stick in the fridge lasted longer than the heated ones, but did not last as long as the room temperature glow stick.

Conclusion & Analysis

My partner and I wanted to know how glow sticks were affected by temperature. We hypothesized that if you put a glow stick under abnormal conditions, it would go out faster. When we looked at our results, we found that our hypothesis was correct: The 87 degree stick extinguished in two and a half hours, the 59 degree stick expired in four hours, the 19 degree glow stick went out at five and a half hours, and the room temperature stick went out at seven and a half hours.

After gathering these results, we did some further research and found that glow sticks are designed to work properly and best at room temperatures, not in hot or cold temperatures. This explains why the room temperature glow stick lasted the longest.

The varying temperatures in the hot plates and refrigerator was a external variable we could not go around, although we tried to get a constant temperature so our results cannot be completely accurate.