UNITED NATIONALS INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL DATA

Group	Insulation Material	Experiment #	Ambient Temp.	30 degrees above value	Turn on heat source	30 degrees above amb going up	30 degrees above amb going down	10 degrees above amb
Class	No foam	1	25	55	30	1850	2184	3010
Class	1 layer foam	2	20.9	50.9	30	288	400	930
Class	2 layers foam	3	242.9	54.9	30	223	272	940
Class	3 layers form	4	24.5	54.5	30	207	470	1280
Group 1	Packaging Peanuts	5	24.2	54.2	30	305	400	1035
Group 2	Soil in Plastic Bags	6	28.1	58.1	30	455	594	1096.6
Group 3	Bubble Wrap	7	25.8	55.8	30	355	772.5	1650
Group 4	Air & foil in Plastic Bags	8	25.1	55.1	30	820	950	1730
Group 5	Cotton Balls	9	26.3	56.3	30	5457	990	3180
Group 6	Wood Shavings	10	26.5	56.5	30	330	330	1020
Group 7	Wool and Felt Scraps	11	27.4	57.4	30	786.66	1390	5530

Group	Insulation Material	Experiment #	5 degrees above amb	Cooling 1 30 to 10 I minus H	Cooling 2 10 to 5 J minus I	Total Cooling Subtracting J minus H	Total Cooling Adding K plus L
Class	No foam	1	4490	826	1480	2306	2306
Class	1 layer foam	2	1780	530	850	1380	1380
Class	2 layers foam	3	1610	668	670	1338	1338
Class	3 layers form	4	2580	810	1300	2110	2110
Group 1	Packaging Peanuts	5	1860	635	825	1460	1460
Group 2	Soin in Plastic Bags	6	1770	502.6	673.4	1176	1176
Group 3	Bubble Wrap	7	2910	877.5	1260	2137.5	2137.5
Group 4	Air & foil in Plastic Bags	8	no reading [.4]	780	no reading
Group 5	Cotton Balls	9	no reading [1.2]	2190	no reading
Group 6	Wood Shavings	10	2350	690	1330	2020	2020
Group 7	Wool and Felt Scraps	11	11180	4140	5650	9790	9790

OVERVIEW OF THE MATERIALS AND SOME THOUGHTS
Group and names	Material	How found	Why good for insulation	Real and potential problems
1-Onyemachi, Michael, Sam B.	Packaging peanuts	Large packages contain this material, and it is thrown out daily.	Heat will be trapped in the air pockets.	Packaging tightly would be difficult.
2 – Marcel, Sam R.	Soil in plastic bags	Recycled soil from city parks distributed twice a year.	People used it for housing long ago.	When packing the soil, the plastic ripped easily.
3 – Ali, Julia, Chanel	Bubble wrap	People throw it out every day. Found in packaging and is used a lot.	Plastic holds heat well. We know this from micro-waving.	Not sure if air stays put. Professional packers do not use it twice.
4 – Francesca, Amanda, Emily	Air-filled plastic bags with crumbled aluminum foil	Both plastic bags and aluminum foil are discarded every day.	Aluminum foil reflects heat, so it will keep the heat in.	It depends in which direction the warmth is reflected.
5 – Kagiso, Woody, Jacob	Cottonballs	People use cotton balls and throw them out. Cotton is also used to pad jackets.	People use cotton in their clothing to keep warm.	They cannot be collected in large amounts, and used cotton balls are contaminated.
6 – Justin, Jehovany, Tony	Wood shavings	We bought the wood shavings, but they are already recycled from carpenters.	We use wood in house building, and wood shavings are plenty.	Wood should be used less to protect the environment. The tree population would descend.
7 – Brian, Christopher	Wool and felt scraps	People throw out old coats and blankets. They can be recycled.	Sheep wear it and they live in harsh conditions. The Mongols’ clothes are made of felt.	More and more people use acrylic and not wool. There might not be enough wool to recycle.

THE RANKED RESULTS
We calculated the time it took to go down to 10 degrees Celsius above ambient temperature because not all the experiments reached five degrees even after waiting longer. This is the ranking in insulation efficiency of the seven recycled materials from least to most efficient:
Soil	503 seconds
Peanuts	635 seconds
Wood shavings	690 seconds
Air+foil in plastic bags	780 seconds
Bubble wrap	2138 seconds
Cotton balls	2190 seconds
Wool scraps and felt	4140 seconds
To compare with the basic foam core insulation:
No layer	826 seconds
One layer	530 seconds
Two layers	668 seconds
Three layers	810 seconds
The readings of the foam core layers do not make total sense. It would have been expected that the temperature in the box without layers should have cooled the fastest.Even though this test was done twice, the results were not much different. There must have been some other interference. Tests must be run many times to iron out idiosyncrasies. The reruns were too time consuming.

Group 3 Report by Ali, Julia and Chanel

We think that bubble wrap would be a good insulator because of the small air pockets. Also, we think that because the bubble wrap is plastic. It will heat up quickly.

This activity involved using a recycled material and testing to see if it would prove to be a good insulation. We tested the insulation in a wooden box that was set up in our computer lab. Our insulation was bubble wrap. We thought that bubble wrap seemed to be a good insulation because the bubbles could hold heat. To run this experiment we first had to do some research on the topic. Then we were given instructions on how to set up and run the experiment. Then we stuffed the box with layers of our insulation. Next, we ran the experiment and recorded the data on an electric probe hooked up to the laptop. Finally, we printed our information on a graph. The entire running of the experiment took about two hours. We found this time during our playtime, and some class time.

My group faced many problems during this project. One of those problems was the material. The material was supposed to be recycled, and our material was. We were going to use mud as our insulating material, but we did not have the right amount.

Bubble wrap heated and cooled down quickly. This was probably caused by the spaces in between the bubbles. Our material would prove to be a good insulation if it were packed together if there were no spaces in between the bubbles. We did not think that we had the best insulation, but we had a material that was fun and easy to test. Our group’s hypothesis proved to be incorrect. The keep the heat project has been an interesting activity and I think our group has made a very good effort in working on this project.

In search of efficient insulation

Emily Schrynemakers, Francesca Sixto, Amanda Wallin
United Nations International School

During the first step of the Keep the Heat experiment, we had to make a hypothesis about which material would be most efficient for this project. Basically, we wanted a good material that would generate heat quickly, but not let it go as fat. We also wanted a material that could hold the heat for a long period of time.

Next, after deciding on our material. We decided on plastic zip lock bags filled with crumpled tin foil and air. We had to gather the material. Since the materials had to be recycled, we went around our school and asked for used zip lock bags from children’s lunches. For the tin foil, we had to borrow some from the kitchen in our school because the tinfoil we had wouldn’t be enough to fill all the bags to fill the whole box.

After managing to fill all the plastic bags, we were ready to test! First we had to take the top and bottom pieces of the box off and fill them entirely with our material. One problem we encountered while putting the material in was when we tried to close the top of the box. It was lopsided, and we knew this would affect the experiment. We used duct tape on the four sides of the box to anchor the top. Another problem we faced during the process was that sometime during the experiment the bottom piece of the box became lopsided. The result for the experiment went a little sour. We soon realized it and made some adjustments. The experiment was back on course. One final problem we encountered was that a person, who shall not be named, made the experiment stop before the temperature reached room temperature. We managed to recover the data.

After we finished the actual testing, we had to fill in some questions about our whole process. We did some mathematical calculations (see poster board) and then of course we have the graph showing the temperature as it increased while the heat was on and decreased after the heat was shut off. (Also on poster board) Originally, Ms. Hugenschmidt had used foam as a type of insulation. She tried no insulation first, one layer of foam second, two layers of foam third, and three layers of foam fourth. According to our results, our insulation proved to be better than two layers of foam. Ours took 780 seconds to cool to 10 degrees above ambient temperature, and it took only 668 seconds for the two layers of foam insulation to get there.

To conclude, the whole experiment went well except for the explained set backs during the experiment. At the end, we also managed to take some digital pictures of the inside of our box with the material inside. We also took some pictures while we were performing the experiment. It was a fun experiment, and we learned a lot from it.

Electronic Educational Village