Byron - 1 Austin Byron Mrs.

Hilliard Chemistry 10B February 2013 Rubber Band Thermodynamics Thermodynamic systems are visible everywhere in everyday life, from conventional ovens to even rubber bands. Rubber bands have the capability of being stretched to upwards of three times their normal size. The atoms of the rubber band when stretched basically jiggle, so to speak. The movement of the rubber bands is boiled down to simply just the vibration of its atoms. The experiment was designed to measure the sign of the enthalpy of the system by stretching and relaxing a rubber band across a researchers forehead. For background knowledge purposes, enthalpy is a thermodynamic state function that is equal to the total heat energy of a system and its surroundings. The initial observations were that when the rubber band was stretched out to its maximum length, the researchers forehead felt an increase in heat, whereas when the rubber band was shortened into a more relaxed state, the researchers forehead cooled down. To begin, the first step of the experiment was to place a rubber band on the forehead of the researcher. Then the rubber band was allowed to heat up to the approximate temperature of the forehead. After a few moments, it was then stretched at a relaxed pace until it reached its maximum stretch length. While the rubber band was stretched it converted the potential energy it had stored just sitting on the forehead into kinetic energy (energy of motion) as it stretched. When the rubber band reached maximum length, not only did it have the most amount of potential energy that it will have stored, due to the researcher exerting energy onto it to keep it in place, but it also had a negative enthalpy. The negative enthalpy of the rubber band was caused

Byron - 2 by the system (the rubber band), releasing heat on the surroundings (the forehead). All of this being true means that the process of when the rubber band was stretched means that it was an exothermic process because by definition the exothermic process is when the heat flows out of a system. Secondly, after all observations of the rubber band being stretched on the researchers forehead, the rubber band was slowly returned to its original position in a relaxed state resting on the forehead. Due to the rubber band going into motion, its large amount of potential energy transferred into kinetic energy. The kinetic energy exerted going from stretched to relaxed is the most amount of kinetic energy the rubber band will have exerted in this process. When the rubber band returned to its relaxed state, the sign of enthalpy it possessed was positive. This is due to the fact that the system (the rubber band) absorbed heat from its surroundings (the forehead). When this happens, the process that this is called is an endothermic process, because by definition an endothermic process has heat flow into the system. The experiment described is a prime example of the First Law of Thermodynamics. This is because the First Law of Thermodynamics is also known as the law of conservation of energy. They state that energy is both neither created nor destroyed, and that energy is only converted from one form to another. Due to that, the energy of the universe will forever remain at a constant level. This is evident in the experiment because not only was the heat energy of the system and surroundings transferred, but also the potential and kinetic energy was transferred inside the system (the rubber band) throughout the experiment. Overall, the rubber bands experienced many forms of energy transfers when looked at closely. Thermodynamics are seen everywhere in everyday life, and hardly ever noticed. This

Byron - 3 experiment can be used to help understand the rules of enthalpy and the First Law of Thermodynamics. Energy is everywhere, as observed in the experiment.