Discussions and Conclusions

Reasons why the initial expansion process can be considered as adiabatic

For a process to be adiabatic, heat transfer should be minimised or eliminated, and the experiment
uses the fact that heat transfer is very slow to make the expansion as adiabatic as possible. This is
explained through the reasons below.

1. A large bore valve was opened for a very short lapse of time (quick snap action). This meant that a
relatively large amount of air was allowed out in a very short time and therefore, the rate of
expansion was quite high. Hence, heat transfer would not have had the time to occur during such an
expansion.

2. The reading of the pressure pi was taken immediately after the valve was closed and the
expansion had stopped by considering the minimum value to which the pressure had dropped. This
ensured that the value of pressure obtained was not affected by any heat transfer and meant that
the expansion could therefore be regarded as adiabatic.

Reliability of the experiment and the results

The expected adiabatic index of air at room temperature is around 1.4 and considering the average
value of 1.402 obtained from the experimental analysis, it can be said that the results are very
accurate. However, it should be underlined that only averaging leads to such accuracy while the
individual trials did reveal some variations. Although a standard deviation of only 0.0205 implies that
the results were done to a high precision, there were many error sources in the experiment which
can account for the variations. Firstly, the response time of pressure sensors or limitations in human
sight could have been an issue when taking readings of pi . In fact, this measurement required
alertness of the observer to be able to see the minimum value of pressure while the pressure sensors
and the console might not have had the time to detect and show the effective minimum value
reached. Secondly, it can be seen that as the starting pressure was reduced, the difference between
ps and pi , and pi and pf also decreased while the accuracy of readings remained to two decimal
places. This inevitably led to a decrease in accuracy of the results from the last two trials which had
the biggest difference from the expected value of 1.4 (0.024 and 0.030 respectively). Finally, the time
taken to open and close the valve for the expansion process varied, since it was done manually. If it
was opened for a little longer in one particular trial, this might have allowed some heat transfer to
occur, hence making the expansion non-adiabatic and affecting the values of pi .

7 Differences in transient responses of the pressure and temperature sensors

When a considerable change in the property of a system occurs within a short time, response time of
sensors inevitably becomes an important factor in the accuracy of measurements or readings for the
said property. In the experiment, to monitor the pressure and temperature, an electronic sensor has
been used The way in which the two types of sensors detect the changes directly affects their
respective transient responses. The electronic pressure sensor, for instance, uses the movement of
its components brought about directly by a change in pressure to detect the latter. This movement
occurs instantaneously and can hence be readily interpreted as a new pressure reading. However, in
the case of the temperature sensor, the platinum resistance should be in thermal equilibrium with
the system for it to give the latters actual temperature. Since thermal equilibrium requires heat
transfer, a slow process, transient responses of temperature sensors are not very accurate, unless the
changes are very small. Throughout the experiment, temperature had to remain almost constant,
implying very small changes, and therefore, accuracy of transient responses of the temperature
sensors was not an issue. On the other hand, pressure changes were significant and occurred within
a very short lapse of time. While the pressure sensors can readily detect the changes, the speed at
which the change is interpreted by the circuits and displayed on the screen then becomes another
factor affecting the overall transient responses. Hence, in this experiment, the transient responses of
temperature sensors were more reliable than those of pressure sensors.

Overall conclusions and possible improvements

Considering the average value for the adiabatic index obtained from the experiment is very close
to the expected value and that the percentage error in the results is around 1.466%, it can be
concluded that the experiment is reliable and so are the results.
Yet, there were several sources of errors which could have affected the accuracy of the results
and they could have been revealed if more trials had been done. Possible improvements could
be the use of data logging which would more effectively interpret the signals from the sensors
and could be set to record the relevant readings automatically. Besides, an electronically
controlled valve could be used for the expansion process, making the trials more consistent and
the results even more reliable.