Spring 2003 Student Final Reports

All classes participating in this project have been asked to submit a final report to the project Discussion Area . In this report, students share what they have learned from doing the project. Click on the school names to see the results of the students' hard work!

Keansburg High School
Keansburg, New Jersey, USA

Dear fellow science students,

Hello we are students from Keansburg, NJ USA attending Keansburg High School. We are a freshman Physical Science class of 17 students. Keansburg is located at 40.442 N and 74.130 W. The elevation of our town is very close to sea level because we are a beach community. Our approximate elevation in our classroom is 7.5 m above sea level.

In the summertime our town is a big tourist attraction. We have a water-park and a boardwalk, with arcades, rides, a pool hall, and food vendors. We are located on New Jersey's Bay Shore.

We are interested to see what affects the boiling point of water. We are not really sure at this point what it might be, but we think it may have to do with elevation.

Thank you,

Mr. Gristina's third period class

Final Report

After making the graphs using Excel we were able to see that boiling point depends on elevation and not the other factors. We were able to tell by getting a best fit line on the graph. We were not too surprised because we thought it might have something to do with elevation to begin with.

We thing boiling point depends on elvation because as elevation increases air pressure decreases and water is able to boil at a lower temperature.

One thing we would do differently is use better equipment. Our thermometers did not reflect the data we should have gotten. We calibrated them but it did not seem to make a differnce.

We enjoyed this project and look forward to doing more projects like this one.

Thank you,

Mr. G's pd. 3

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Alice Deal Junior High School
Washington, DC, USA

Dear other students and teachers around the world,

Our school, Alice Deal Junior High School, is located in Washington, D.C. in the northwest sector at 38 degrees 57 minutes N and 77 degrees 4 minutes W. Washington DC is the capital of the United States. It has a population of about 570,000 people and is about 68.2 square miles. We have a temperate climate here. We do not have a standard climate and we are just pulling out of a hard winter. Washington used to be a swamp until a city was built on it.

Deal is one of the largest junior high schools in the Metropolitan area and home to around 1000 students. Thats why there is more than 20 people in each class. Our school goes from seventh grade all the way through ninth grade. Our school can be really nice, probably like yours. We have a large field and blacktop with streets surrounding the area. Around us are communities of residential areas and larger streets with shops and restaurants. Our school was built in 1931 so it's really old. What makes our school unique is that it is located near a fort. Our school is at a higher elevation (400 feet) than most of the rest of DC (average 9 m).

Life in Washington is a little tense right now, but it does not stop our everyday lives. We continue to go school six hours a day, hang out with friends, and do other things we love. You may believe that America contains one stereotypical western culture, but that is not the case. Alice Deal has a lot of different cultures and race, mostly all the classmates are Spanish (speaking) and African American, and a little portion of Asian culture. Alice Deal to most students is just a big family were we all try to get along.

Our community is great. We don't have a lot of drug dealers, killings or robberys. It is also very easy to get to almost any place in the city because of the subway and public buses. We in DC participate in a lot of activities, locally and international. Many people come to Washington DC year round to enjoy its many attractions. There is a huge number of great museums and other sites downtown. You might have visited here to see the beautiful cherry blossoms that bloom profusely in the spring.

Alice Deal and Washington DC is known for its amazing sports teams. At Alice Deal there are options of joining sports from soccer to football to fencing. Washington is known for our basketball team, the Wizards and our hockey team, the Capitals. Our school offers many different opportunities that other schools don't. We have many singing and music programs. From these sports teams and programs, we have excelled in every one.

We are in eighth grade in Ms. Helm's physical science classes. So far this year we have completed units on energy, magnets, light, electricity, and much more including individual science projects. We have recently begun to study matter, and as part of this unit we are participating in the International Boiling Point Project.

Finally, we understand that IBPP wants to know what students around the world think might affect the boiling point of water. We conducted an experiment in which we heated water and measured its temperature using probes. We graphed our data and discussed the patterns. We brainstormed about some of the factors that could vary the temperature of the water in seemingly identical experiments and decided on a hypothesis.

1st period – We don't know what will affect the boiling point of water.

5th period - We think that the device used to heat the water is the variable that will cause the results to fluctuate the most.

3rd period – We think that the volume of water affects the boiling point the most. When we were instructed to place 250 ml of water in an Erlenmeyer flask we placed a little more than asked for. Our boiling point was 107 degrees when everyone elses was around 101 degrees or 105 degrees.

6th period – We think the amount of water will affect the boiling point the most.

7th period – Some ideas we had (that might affect the boiling point of water) were:
the amount of water, the type of water, the purity, how close the flask is to the center of the hot plate, how hot the hot plate is, the view of the temperature reader, salinity of the water. What do you think affects the boiling point of water?

We look forward to working on this interesting project. We are very interested to hear from other groups participating in this project. We would be fascinated to find out where you are from and what thoughts you might have regarding this project.

Note from Ms. Helm: Fifth period is also using CBL temperature probes (with TI 83+ calculators) to collect data and compare to standard thermometer readings. This is new technology that the students and I are learning together as we participate in the IBPP. (We joyfully practice audacious constructivist inquiry here :))! Any ideas for application or hints for troubleshooting are sincerely appreciated!

Final Report From Alice Deal JHS

When we graphed temperature change over time for three days we found out that temperature increases steadily then levels out at the boiling point. Our school's average boiling point was 105 degrees C, which is high for our elevation (120 m). This was a precise value (because many of the groups from our schools had around 105 degrees), but it probably was not accurate. Maybe the thermometers were not calibrated correctly, or maybe they were all 'off'. The average boiling point temperatures recorded from the CBL probes were around 99.5 degrees C, so they were probably more accurate.

Using Microsoft Excel we created scatterplot graphs with the IBPP data for three factors (elevation, room temperature, and volume of water) and a bar graph for one factor (heating device) in relation to average boiling point.

Elevation was negatively correlated with boiling point (as elevation increased, boiling point decreased).

Many people used the same volume of water but this did not affect boiling point because different volumes had different boiling points. Also, many classes had around the same room temperature yet had different boiling points, so room temperature was not related to boiling point.

When we graphed the heating devices against temperature of bp, at first it looked like there was a big difference between them. But when we looked more closely, we saw that the intervals on the y-axis can cause the graph to look misleading. So we graphed it again making sure the y-axis started at zero degrees instead of in the nineties.

We all conclude that elevation has the most effect on boiling point, but heating devices seemed to slightly affect it. All classes had to reject their hypotheses so we were all surprised. New ideas for research included comparing boiling points for different kinds of water, comparing heating devices at the same location, and comparing boiling points in pressurized and unpressurized environments.
Thanks a lot for the project! We had a good time!

Sincerely,
Deal JHS 8th grade physical science (Ms. Helm's classes)

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Kapunda High School
Kapunda, South Australia

Letter of Introduction from Kapunda High School

Kapunda High School, South Australia, Australia Tuesday, March 04, 2003

Hello to all ‘boilers',

At our school there are three year 8 classes, (the students are about about 13 years old), involved with the Boiling Point project. Mr. Noble and Mr. Wright are the two teachers involved with the project. The school is 263 metres above sea level and at 34.27 South latitude and 139.00 East longitude.

Our hypothesis was that if the room temperature increased then the boiling point would also increase. Although some people said it would not change.

The students in our classes study Mathematics, English, Geography, Science, History, Physical Education, Drama, Agriculture, music, health and Art.

Kapunda is a town of about 2050 people and is about 80 Km north of Adelaide, the capital of South Australia. The climate is hot (35 C) and dry in summer and cold (no snow) and wet in winter. The area around Kapunda is hilly but no mountains and is into cattle, sheep, wheat and wine. Many people also work in the city of Adelaide but live out here.

Our school was once part of a large cattle and sheep station owned by a famous cattle and sheep station owner called Sir Sydney Kidman. Kapunda was one of the first places in Australia to mine copper but that has since run out. Now some people mine for gold.

We have a web site at www.kapundahs.sa.edu.au


Cheers

8Sc1Ch
Natasha, James, Stuart, Karalee, Nathan, Sarah, Tash, Angus, Nicholas, Daniel, Luke, Melanie, Jasmine, Anthony, Luke, Anna, Kristy, Kyar and Bevan

Final Report of Boiling Point Project (pdf)

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Orville A. Todd Middle School
Poughkeepsie, New York, USA

Dear Participating Schools,

Before this international experiment, you probably haven't even heard of the Spackenkill School District, much less Orville A. Todd Middle School. As you now may know, Todd Middle School is the only school in the Hudson Valley, and the state of New York that is participating in the International Boiling Point Project. It is located in Dutchess County, in the Spackenkill (which means "speaking waters") school district. Our latitude is 41 degrees 39' 33" N, and our longitude is 73 degrees 55' 32" W. Our school's elevation lies at about 51.82 meters above sea level and is located near to the Hudson River.

Orville A. Todd Middle School is made up of teachers dedicated to their jobs. Most, if not all, of the teachers would be willing to give up theur own free time to help students with things that they need help in or don't understand. There are also a great variety of subjects taught by teachers, such as the basics (science, math, English, etc.), music (orchestra, band, chorus, etc.), physical education and encore classes (art, technology, HomeEc, computer, etc.)

Because the amount of students at Todd Middle is not very high (466), we have a pretty good budget, allowing for many extra-curricular and after-school activities. Orville A. Todd has always made a name for itself, placing first in many of these including Odyssey of the Mind, Mathcounts, Regional Science Fairs, Scholastic Quizbowl, as well as its many sports (football, soccer, basketball, etc.). Its many after-school clubs include the Environmental Club, Mathleague, Science Club, Chess Club, Ping-pong Club, and the Newspaper Club.

Todd Middle School is situtated in the community of Poughkeepsie, in Dutchess County. The Town of Poughkeepsie is a peaceful, small community. This is a very convenient location, with IBM located here. Residents of the Town of Poughkeepsie have easy access to supermarkets, schools, shops, as well as nearby train station, and anything you need. One popular tourist site is the Samuel F.B> Morse House (the inventor of the telegraph and Morse code).

We are proud to live in Poughkeepsie and go to Orville A. Todd Middle School, and we are glad for this chance to participate in the International Boiling POint Project of 2003. We hope that you know more about us now, and that our results will be helpful in the experiment.

Sincerely,
Students at OA Todd Middle School

Final Report

From the other schools' data that our class analyzed, we concluded that elevation had the most effect on the boiling point of water. Therefore, our class's hypothesis, that the heating device had the most effect, was not supported by the data we looked at. We came to this conclusion because all of the other graphs beside elevation had dots or bars randomly scattered all over the place. The graph showing elevation had a mostly sloped line of dots slanting down to the right. This showed us that elevation and the boiling point of water have an inverse relationship; as the elevation increases, the boiling point decreases.

We learned that this has to do with the air pressure, because the higher the elevation, the lower the air pressure, and the lower the boiling point. The boiling point starts when the bubbles in the water can entirely resist the outside air pressure, so the higher the outside pressure, the higher the boiling point will be because the bubbles need more energy to stand up to the outside air.

We enjoyed doing this experiment and learning about other schools. Thanks for letting us participate.

Students at OA Todd Middle School

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Mme. Perreault's Chemistry student
Ontario, Canada

Final Report

Hello everyone,

I hope everyone's boiling point project went as well as mine. I, as well, found that elevation influenced the boiling point the most out of them all. The higher your elevation, the lower the boiling point and vice versa. I apologize about not having any pictures, graphs or charts. My computer would not create the graphs and charts the way that it should have.

I know that I personally enjoyed this Project a lot. I was really curious to see what influences the boiling point the most. In the future, I would definitely consider doing another project like this. It was really neat to see and know that people all over the world were doing the same project I was.

I did this project as part of my Independent Study for my Grade 12 University Level Chemistry Class. Although this project is more designed for people of a little bit younger level, I am still able to do the experiment and take a more in depth analysis of all the results that I acquire from all of you who did the experiment as well and submitted your results. I would just like to thank Meg Turner for doing this project again and i would also like to thank all of you out there for making this project a fun and worthwhile learning experience.

My greatest appreciation and my best wishes go out to you all. I wish you all the best in your classes this year and every year. Good Luck.
Maybe some of you will also do more of these type of projects and well get to work together again.

Thank you all,
Mme. Perreault's Chem student :)

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Edison Middle School
West Orange, New Jersey, USA

Dear Fellow Science Students,

Salutations! We are 7th grade students from Edison Middle School in West Orange, New Jersey, USA. West Orange is located at 40:47:34N, 74:15:49W. Our elevation is approximately 500 feet above sea level. This is not true in all places because our town has many hills. We are on the east coast, located near the Atlantic Ocean. It takes about 25 minutes without traffic to get to New York City from our town.
We are very interested in seeing the results of the boiling point project. Our hypothesis is that elevation and room temperature have the biggest affect on the boiling point.
Our state, the “Garden State”, gets its name from the plethora of vegetation we have. Our state bird is the Eastern Goldfinch. Our state flower is the Violet. In our state we have hot summers and cold winters.  New Jersey is home to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. New Jersey is a leading industrial state and is the largest chemical producing state in the nation.

Sports we like to play here include soccer, basketball, baseball, volleyball, softball, lacrosse, skateboarding, roller blading, hockey, and cheerleading. The first baseball game was played in Hoboken.

As of 2000, West Orange's total population is 44,943. Our population is 23.3% children under the age of 18. In West Orange, you will find Thomas Edison's home and his laboratory, now a museum, in his National Historic Site. This laboratory had a huge influence on the lives of many people worldwide. Out of this light bulb inventor's laboratory came the motion picture camera, greatly enhanced photographs, sound recordings, silent movie, movies with sound, and the nickel-iron alkaline battery.

Edison Middle School is named after the prominent Thomas Alva Edsion. Edison Middle school is one of the two middle schools in West Orange (Grades 6-8). Classes start at 8:15 AM and end at 2:49 PM. The amount of students in our school is approximately 655 children. About 200 7th graders are doing this project. Our school colors are green and gold and our mascot is the Knight. In the school 7th and 8th graders can sign up for sports such as soccer, baseball, softball, and cheerleading. Our school also offers students of any grade to join our school clubs.
Well, that is all about where we live. We look forward to hearing about you!

With Much Enthusiasm,
The 7th Graders of EMS

Final Report

All though we had many different opinions as to why the boiling point of water might differ, the strongest link seems to be BP and elevation. The second strongest link seems to be BP and room temperature. The results were fairly close to all of our classes' hypotheses.

We learned a lot during this project, and we had fun. We also had a great time reading all of your letters and visiting your websites. We hope you did too!

Sincerely,
Edison Middle School
West Orange, NJ

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Delphi Community School Corporation
Delphi, Indiana, USA

Final Report

After analyzing the data we determined that the elevation contributed the most to the Boiling point of water. To do this we plotted three different graphs. Each of these graphs was boiling point as a function of the either volume of water, room temperature, or elevation. By looking at the graphs we saw that boiling point as a function of elevation really showed a large range of boiling points. The rest of the graphs all showed a small range of boiling points.
We really enjoyed this project. We got to learn a lot about other schools and how different experiments might be affected just because of where they are located. We thought it was really fun to compare our results with other people. We would like to thank the people that made this project possible. We would love to do another project like this again.

Click here for our scatter graph! (pdf)

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Show Low Junior High School
Show Low, Arizona

Salutations from the Show Low Junior High School

We would like to share with you a little bit of our school background.

Our attendance is 427 students, 207 eighth grade students. We are a public school and teach both male and female students. Our school is also run and maintained by many great teachers that do a perfect job of keeping the students in line. Show Low Junior High School was founded in 1972.

The town of Show Low, Arizona, is home of the Cougars. We are a small town in which 8,085 Americans reside. You may be wondering, where the heck do they get the name Show Low. Well, the fact is that our name has a very intriguing story behind it. Two ranch owners, Cooley and Clark, were fighting over this land, and instead of just shooting each other like was customary, they decided to settle their differences in a game of show low poker. (Show low is a game in which both players draw cards and then the player who shows the lowest card wins.) The two drew their cards and Cooley cooly showed Clark a miraculously drawn "deuce of clubs" card.

Thus, Cooley won the game as well as the land. Now our main roads are "Cooley " and "Deuce of Clubs".

Our altitude is 1937 meters. Thirty five minutes from the school is a 50 trail ski resort that some students enjoy with school trips. We live on the edge of the White Mountains, 170 miles from the town of Phoenix in the Sonoran Desert. We are 34* 14' .932" North latitude and 110* 2' .094" West longitude.

To sum it all up, we live a pretty well set up community. Hope you enjoyed a little history. We have a photograph or two to send, but we are on Spring break and everyone is gone right now.

Sincerely yours.
5th Hour Life Science Class
Show Low Junior High

Final Report (pdf)

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Amphitheater High School - Wildlife Ecology- 6th and 7th periods
Tucson, Arizona, USA

Hi Everyone,
Greetings from the sunny city of Tucson, Arizona (one of the sunniest cities in the United States!). Tucson and the surrounding area has a population of about 800,000 and is located in the unique habitat of the Sonoran Desert. Amphitheater High School is located in the center of Tucson and is attended by about 1600 students. We are biology students taking a course that focuses on ecology, the study of the relationships that living things have with each other and their physical environment. Our latitude is 32.12N and 110.93W. Our elevation is 765 meters. As a group we could not decide on one hypothesis. Our top two predictions of factors that will impact the boiling temperature of water are volume of water and elevation. A number of us also believe that the boiling temperature of water will not be impacted by any of the variables in this experiment.
Sincerely,
Mrs. Bejarano's Wildlife Ecology students

Final Report

After our analysis of the data, we conclude that
1. There is not a connection between room temperature and boiling point.
2. There is not a connection between volume of water and boiling point.
3. There is a connection between elevation and boiling point. As elevation increases, boiling point decreases. Although this pattern was quite evident from the data we analyzed, ideally there would have been more data from high elevation locations.

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Kingswood College
Victoria, Australia

We are a small, co-educational school in Victoria, Australia about 15 kilometers from Melbourne (latitude 38 degrees South, longitude 146 degrees East). We have two year seven classes each of 25 students. Our average ages are between 12-13 years old. We are all doing our first year of Science. So far we have been introduced to Bunsen burners and this is our first project. We are really enjoying being part of the project and think that it is a great way to learn Science.

Final Report

T he elevation was the biggest variation in the results. We noticed a decline in the average boiling point as the elevation increased. We created scatter graphs of the results using Microsoft Excel of the average boiling point vs. the elevation, volume of water, heating device and average room temperature. We then analyzed all of the graphs and looked for any correlation. We noticed that as the elevation increased, the boiling point lowered.

About half the class initially thought that the volume of water would make the most difference to the average boiling point and only three people hypothesized that elevation would make the most difference. Yet when we compared this to our results, we discovered that many people were incorrect with their predictions and their hypothesis was disproved.
For water to boil the air pressure of the bubbles in the water needs to be higher than the air pressure outside. As the elevation increases, the air pressure gets lower and therefore the water does not have to get to the same temperature to boil as it does at sea level.

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Beaver Lake Middle School
Issaquah, Washington, USA

Final Report
Here at BLMS we investigated the affect of volume on the boiling point of water. Our analysis of the data showed us that as volume of water increased so did its boiling point. However, this relationship was not a strong one and could be the result of other variables confounding our data. Our analysis of the other variables involved (elevation, heating device used, and room temperature) have shown us that elevation is the variable that has the most impact on changing the boiling point of water. We've seen that as elevation increases the boiling point of water decreases (an inverse relationship).

If we were to continue investigating what affects the boiling point of water we would like to see what happens to the boiling point of water in zero gravity conditions. How low can the boiling point of water go?

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New York R IV School
Caldwell County, Missouri, USA

Hello!!

We are members of the 8th grade class in New York R-IV School.

Our school is a very small rural school based in a farming community in Caldwell County, Missouri.
We are just a little southeast of Hamilton, MO on the corner of St. Route U & B. Our elevation is 994 ft.
Our latitude and longitude is 39o N and 93o W. Our school has approximately 48 students in
the K-8th grade. We are doing this project in our science class.

Our hypothesis is that the biggest factor in boiling point is the elevation. The rest of the factors
may change the time it takes for water to boil but we don't think they will change the boiling point itself.

After graphing the data, our class concluded as they had predicted that the boiling point was more affected by elevation than the other factors.  When drawing a best fit line, the other factors were a flat line. The elevation graph showed a slight slope.

Thank you for providing this opportunity!

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Newington College
Sydney, Australia

Newington College is a private boys' school run by the Uniting Church. The school was established in 1863 and has a strong tradition in sport and the arts.

In all there is a total of 1600 students from kindergarten to year 12. The students travel from all over Sydney to attend the school and we also have a large number of students from overseas. We also have a boarding house.

The school is located in a slightly elevated position approximately 5 km SSW of the centre of Sydney, in the suburb of Stanmore. The latitude and longitude of Sydney is 151.10E and 33.52S

We have 7 year 7 classes and 6 of them will be participating in the International Boiling Point Project.

Final Report

This is the final report from Newington College year 7 classes.

The hypothesis varied slightly from class to class and this final report comes from the analysis of 7C. The analysis of the results was similar from class to class and it should be. The sending in of our final report has been affected by school holidays here in Sydney and some classes did not get the time to complete the analysis. 7C's report is as follows. Our hypothesis was pointing towards room temperature having the strongest correlation to boiling point because it would affect the starting temperature of the water. However, our graphs showed that elevation had the strongest correlation to the boiling point.

In conclusion our hypothesis was wrong because although elevation plays a part in room temperature, elevation plays a stronger role in the boiling point of water.

Thank you for a most interesting project.

Islay Clark