Chemistry Hand Warmer
The purpose of this project was to create a hand warmer using chemistry concepts we have learned to make a product to sell in various student stores. This product had to be cheap, effective, environmentally friendly, and have a temperature change of around 20*C..
We began this project by doing a lab which tested the temperature change of various salts when mixed with water. Some resulted in endothermic reactions, those which take in heat, and some resulted in exothermic reactions, those which release energy in the form of heat as a product. For the purposes of our hand warmer, we utilized Lithium Chloride initially, and later moved on to Calcium Chloride because it posed a better combination of cost and overall effectiveness. We created a hand warmer of various materials encapsulated within a thick plastic bag. Within the bag, there was a mixture of Lithium Chloride (later changed to Calcium Chloride), vermiculite, iron powder, a 10mL packet of water, and we later added an additional amount of activated charcoal powder for insulative purposes. This packet was contained within a reusable cotton pouch, closed with two pieces of velcro, which aided in the preservation of radiant heat. The science behind our hand warmer, as well as the reaction may be viewed in our presentation in full.
We had a lot of trial and error for this lab, tinkering with the amounts of each substance within our product to create an ideal, changing substances around, among other things. We changed the amounts of vermiculite and iron powder frequently, and ended up exchanging the Lithium Chloride for Calcium Chloride, for cost effectiveness. Our hand warmer was not the best in any category out of the rest of the class, but we had a solid presentation and we did end up improving our product greatly in the end. My group really worked well to improve our product through trial and error, and we did so in an educated manner - using our knowledge of chemistry and physics, as well as thermodynamics to improve our product without blindness. The main area in which we could have improved on was in the environmental sustainability of the product we made. It is not reusable save for the outer covering, the plastic used is not recyclable, the products not compostable. This project was overall a success, but we definitely could have improved upon a lot of aspects of it.
We began this project by doing a lab which tested the temperature change of various salts when mixed with water. Some resulted in endothermic reactions, those which take in heat, and some resulted in exothermic reactions, those which release energy in the form of heat as a product. For the purposes of our hand warmer, we utilized Lithium Chloride initially, and later moved on to Calcium Chloride because it posed a better combination of cost and overall effectiveness. We created a hand warmer of various materials encapsulated within a thick plastic bag. Within the bag, there was a mixture of Lithium Chloride (later changed to Calcium Chloride), vermiculite, iron powder, a 10mL packet of water, and we later added an additional amount of activated charcoal powder for insulative purposes. This packet was contained within a reusable cotton pouch, closed with two pieces of velcro, which aided in the preservation of radiant heat. The science behind our hand warmer, as well as the reaction may be viewed in our presentation in full.
We had a lot of trial and error for this lab, tinkering with the amounts of each substance within our product to create an ideal, changing substances around, among other things. We changed the amounts of vermiculite and iron powder frequently, and ended up exchanging the Lithium Chloride for Calcium Chloride, for cost effectiveness. Our hand warmer was not the best in any category out of the rest of the class, but we had a solid presentation and we did end up improving our product greatly in the end. My group really worked well to improve our product through trial and error, and we did so in an educated manner - using our knowledge of chemistry and physics, as well as thermodynamics to improve our product without blindness. The main area in which we could have improved on was in the environmental sustainability of the product we made. It is not reusable save for the outer covering, the plastic used is not recyclable, the products not compostable. This project was overall a success, but we definitely could have improved upon a lot of aspects of it.