Conservation of Mass Investigation

Hypothesis: The baking soda and vinegar will create more mass than the soda and pop rocks because while the soda and pop rocks are just releasing the carbon dioxide trapped in them while an actual chemical reaction is going on with the baking soda and vinegar.

Observations: For the first part of the experiment with the pop rocks and the soda the balloon did not get blown up much at all. The reason for that was the balloon was being blown up by only the amount of Carbon Dioxide that was in the spark rocks instead of some kind of chemical reaction. (we know that it was Carbon Dioxide because the packet it came in said so.) What was kind of interesting was that our balloon did not inflate as much as some other groups. This may be because of the difference between the spark rocks and how much carbon dioxide they had in them.

The next experiment with the baking soda and the vinegar released much more gas and filled up the balloon quite a bit. By the time the balloon stopped inflating it was about the size of a cantaloupe. There was a lot of bubbles made by the chemical reaction, and when we measured the vinegar after the chemical reaction we found that the amount appeared to have increased. But we figured that it was just because of the amount of bubbles in the cylinder.

The picture above is what the two experiments looked like next to each other.

Conclusion: I excepted my hypothesis because the baking soda/vinegar combination worked much better and released more gas than the soda/pop rock combination. In this lab it was much harder to form a hypothesis. Jacob, Rory, and I had to gather a lot of information and make a bunch of inferences to come up with a decent hypothesis. All in all, it was a great experience and taught us a lot about the subject of mass. And the only problems that came up was a defective balloon for the second experiment. Luckily it did not ruin the results.