Penguins And Their Heat

Aim: Finding out how penguins are able to maintain their heat when living and
supporting really cold environments and temperatures.
Hypothesis: In my opinion, penguins manage to continue with their heat because
of several reasons, such as their outside feathers, their inner belly fat, and because
they are constantly hanging in groups which helps tem to decrease the amount of
cold.
Materials: The materials we are going to need for the experiment are:
1. 8 test tubes
2. 1 test tube individually
3. A bucket with ice
4. A water bath for the temperature of water
5. One jar
6. A timer
7. Thermometer
8. Heat water
Variables:
Independent: The water bath as we could change and manage the temperature
we wanted to use.
- The time, as we controlled how much time we were going to let the tubes in the
water and ice.
Dependent: The Temperature, as it was based on the initial temperature of the
water bath.
Controlled: The test tubes, as we always use the same amount of them to get
precise results.

Method:
1. Put some water to heat up
2. Meanwhile, take 8 test tubes and put a rubber band to join them
3. Put some of the heated water inside the test tubes
4. With the thermometer measure the first temperature of the water
5. Take the temperature again every 30 seconds for 3 times.
6. Take out the tubes and put them inside the jar, and add 10 ice cubes and
water to it.
 7. Wait for other 30 seconds, take out the tubes, and record the temperature.
Repeat this every 30 seconds three times.
8. Record all your results on the data table
9. Now, repeat the experiment but trying it with only one test tube, individually.
10. Again, record the results every 30 seconds

Data Table:
Time Test Tubes Temperature Temperature
before (initial) cold water
(after)
30 seconds 1 32º 19º
60 seconds 1 33º 20º
90 seconds 1 35º 18º

30 seconds 8 34 22º
60 seconds 8 34 25º
90 seconds 8 36 20º

PENGUINS AND THEIR CHANGE OF TEMPERATURE

40

35

30

25

20 1 penguin
Series1
15 8 Series2
10

0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5

Evaluation:
After completing our experiment and getting all our results, we felt like we did a
good job in our work. We did get some of the results that we were expecting at
first, but there are also other problems we didn’t thought about. We can say that
our results were reliable as we repeated them for three times and we got similar
data each time, but what we didn’t thought about was what we also said in our
hypothesis, that based on actual physical characteristics like feathers, we might not
get the same results by using glass test tubes than by having a coverage of
feathers. This problem could be fixed by trying to put a blanket or something that
gave an extra warm around the tubes. Another mistake was that we should’ve
researched the temperature of the poles and the temperature in the penguins to
see if we could have increase our heat or get freezer ice so the change would be
much reduce but almost with the same difference. The last problem we found out
about was time. Penguins spend under cold water, and are constantly suffering
cold, but they continue to be warm in the inside, so putting the tubes inside there
for only 30 seconds was a very short amount of time, so it is recommended to
leave them for around 5 minutes to improve it.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, we can say that based in our hypothesis and the results we got
through our experiment, it is certain to say that we were able to find out how parts
of our hypothesis were right, and how we suppose about the other ones too. We
can say that it was true how penguins by going out in-group maintain the heat
between one another. What we can’t find out is if the feathers and the time could
have changed a lot our results, but in general we were able to find the general idea
of it and it was very interesting to be researching about it.