Hand Warmer Project
Our STEM CHEM 3* class was tasked with creating a chemical hand warmer to sell at the student store. The criteria was that it had to be effective in achieving a temperature increase of over 20 degrees Celsius, safe, efficient, and durable, as well as inexpensive and easy to manufacture. Preceding the project, we did labs in which we mixed ionic salts with water and recorded the temperature change. This was to serve as the basis for our projects. In our project we deviated from the norm of using salts like other groups but instead we used Activated Charcoal, Vermiculite, Iron Powder, and Salt. We came to this conclusion of this mixture from taking inspiration from normal hand warmers sold at stores. We adjusted our ratios of ingredients within to the optimal ratios for the best heat reactions. We were missing two necessary ingredients for a duration of manufacturing. We were missing the vermiculite which was essential for holding water without leakage, and the iron powder which was a major activator. We substitued many things in for the iron powder after finding the vermiculite. We finally obtained the iron powder, and after a few trials, we recieved an almost 80 degree increase! We sewed it up and it was very efficient. Our groups presentation was very well performed and we recieved positive feedback from all judges. our presentation is below: |
This project was a difficult and interesting task as well as it excercised our minds and we learned a lot. We had few disadvantages to our design and many advantages. The building process and design process was a difficult task and coming up with something unique from the others was our biggest advantage. I greatly enjoyed this project and enjoyed my group.
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