Which bulb is best? -Science Experiment

Thursday 22nd of August

During our studies on renewable energy sources we decided we wanted to find out if energy saving light bulbs were worth using. Some of the class had seen an advertisement on television that showed a chocolate teddy bear melting over a light bulb. We had also read during one of our web searches that a lot of the energy that is used to power light bulbs is lost as heat. We decided to test out if energy saving light bulbs or regular bulbs gave off the most heat and light based on the watts needed to run them. We brainstormed how we could test this, the equipment we would need and how we could design a fair test.

We set up the experiment in the classroom and watched to see the results. Our hypothesis was that the more energy needed to power the bulb the faster the chocolate would melt (we used chocolate frogs, not bears for our experiment).

 The class designing the experiment with the equipment.

 Brainstorming what we had to do to make it a fair test.

 We had to make all of the lights the same height from the chocolate frogs,

 Almost ready to melt some froggies!

The energy saving bulb was much brighter, but with less heat.

In the end the frog over the regular bulb was really melted and the one on the torch and flashlight were hardly melted at all. So our hypothesis was correct! Then it was time to eat the chocolate - YUM!

Written by Ms McKergow, Claudia and Jack