Marble Racing to Find a Liqids Viscosity - 1612 Words

Race Your Marbles to Discover a Liquids Viscosity Which Liquid Has the Highest Viscosity? In this project we will determine the viscosities of 5 separate liquids. The liquids we will test are corn syrup, honey, vegetable oil, milk, and water. We will find their viscosities by dropping a marble into each of these liquids and measuring the time it takes for it to reach the bottom. Before we conduct the experiment, we must first understand what viscosity is. â€Å"Viscosity is the quantity that describes a fluids resistance to flow†.1 It is essentially fluid friction and transforms kinetic energy of motion into heat energy, just as friction (â€Å"the force between surfaces in contact that resists their relative tangential motion†) does between†¦show more content†¦This equation is not a law of nature, but a reasonable first approximation. Liquids such as water and some gases fit this criterion and are called Newtonian fluids. Water is an example of a Newtonian fluid because, no matter how fast it is stirred or mixed, it still exemplifies properties of a fluid. When stirring or mixing a non-Newtonian fluid a â€Å"hole† is left behind. It may also become thinner and more viscous. Jean Louis Marie Poiseuille was interested in the flow of human blood and formulated Poiseuille’s Law. He made a series of tubes to test uniform viscous liquids in. These successfully modeled the blood flow in capillaries and veins, flow through a drinking straw, air flow in lung alveoli, or through a needle. The equation he used was: [pic] where: ΔP is the pressure drop L is the length of pipe ÃŽ ¼ is the dynamic viscosity Q is the volumetric flow rate r is the radius Ï€ is pi In order to form a hypothesis of which fluid has the highest viscosity, we must also have knowledge of each fluid we will test. Corn syrup is glucose syrup that is made from cornstarch. The viscosity and sweetness of it depends on the amount of hydrolysis it undergoes. It is most commonly used as a thickener, a sweetener, and in maintaining a food’s freshness. Honey