Paintballs Effects on the Environment
Statement of Purpose:
Whole Group Materials:
Procedures
Data and Results:
Below I have a graph that shows the temperature change between 4 different experiments (2 paintballs in the sun, one broken, and 2 paintballs inside, one broken). Other than temperature, I noticed that the paintballs outside shifted color to grey, and then too a slight red, and the ones inside hardly changed.
My Poster:
- Our experiment was designed to test the biodegradation of paintballs in different environments.
- Throughout our research, we found that paintballs are very biodegradable, and very water soluble. Since paintballs are made out of gelatin, the shell breaks down very quickly without leaving any lasting marks on the environment, and its water solubility allows the paint to come off your clothes in one wash.
Whole Group Materials:
- 8 clear plastic bins
- Dirt/Soil
- Gelatin Paintballs
- Water (10 mL)
- Ammonia
- 4 clear plastic bins
- Dirt/Soil
- Gelatin Paintballs
Procedures
- Fill 4 bins with dirt or soil, about half way depending on your bin size
- Place 2 whole paintballs in a bin, and place 2 broken paintballs in a bin
- Place 2 bins outside in the sun (one whole, one broken), and leave 2 inside
- Check back 1 - 2 times a day and take the temperature of each paintball (broken and whole)
- Record any other observations
Data and Results:
Below I have a graph that shows the temperature change between 4 different experiments (2 paintballs in the sun, one broken, and 2 paintballs inside, one broken). Other than temperature, I noticed that the paintballs outside shifted color to grey, and then too a slight red, and the ones inside hardly changed.
My Poster:
Reflection:
I feel like I take notes really well, and it all makes sense to me. When other people look at my lab notebook it might look a little confusing, but I can find everything very easily and it is all where it is supposed to be. I tend to take notes very quickly, so my handwriting is very sloppy, but it's all readable for me, and it saves me a lot of time. I think that I can still be more organized with my notebook by marking important pages. Right now I only have one marker leading to my polyatomic's, so I could probably put another marker on my Moles and Reactions page, or something along those lines. I could also be more careful with my chemistry notebook, because near the end of the semester pages started to rip, and some pages were folded. I feel like I keep track of my my assignments pretty well also. At the beginning of the semester, I just kept everything in my chemistry notebook, and it would often get lost or ripped. But after I realized that was a bad method of doing it, I decided to keep it in my folder for all of my other classes. I have a side reserved for chemistry, so I keep all of my papers in one place so I can't lose them. This method works a lot better than how I was doing it originally, and now I hardly ever lose papers. Once I turn them in, I staple them into my notebook permanently so they cant fall out.
Picture of Lab Notebook:
Above is a picture of my Chemistry Notebook, more specifically my experiment observations. I feel like this page is a good representation of how I organize my lab notebook. To the naked eye, it may be a little hectic and chaotic, but for me, I can find everything really easily and it's all organized. It displays the day, time, temperature (in Celsius and fahrenheit), and some observations I noticed each day. Using this, I was able to make the graph below to display my data. So although it may look a little messy at first, It works perfectly for me and it increased my productivity when I was writing my observations. This also represents most of my other pages in my lab notebook, clearly separated but still organized and clean. Some pages are a bit messier, with numbers and equations being thrown everywhere with no organization, but most of the time its clean and organized.