1. Aim: To observe how heat travels through different metals and understand which material conducts heat the fastest.
2. Requirements: stainless steel (or iron), copper, and aluminium bars (30 cm each), candle and wax, pins, and burner.
3. Procedure:
- Take three bars (copper, aluminium, and stainless steel) of the same shape and size.
- Apply wax spots at intervals of 2 cm on each bar. Stick a pin upright in each wax spot.
- Place the ends of all three bars into the flame of a burner simultaneously.
- Observe which pins start falling first as the wax melts.
4. Conclusion: Pins on the copper bar fall first, showing that copper conducts heat the fastest. Pins on the steel bar fall last, meaning steel conducts heat more slowly. Heat travels from the hot end to the cold end of the bar, melting the wax and causing the pins to fall.
This experiment shows that conduction is the process by which heat transfers through solids, and different materials conduct heat at different speeds.
Conduction of heat
