Viscosity of Cooling Lava
I designed an experiment to test how the amount of crystals in lava effected the viscosity. I predicted that the more crystals, the quicker the lava would travel down the side of the volcano. I substituted lava with molasses and the rock crystals with sugar crystals. I chose these substitutions because lava is liquefied crystal and molasses is liquefied sugar. I used a long tube to represent the side of a volcano. To test my hypothesis I first poured 1/3 of a cup of molasses down a tube with one cup of sugar. I continued this pattern with two cups and then three cups of sugar. I timed how long it took each trial to travel down the tube.
During this experiment I found my hypothesis to be incorrect. The more sugar crystals that were added to the molasses the longer it took to travel down the tube. I noticed that the lava started off quicker with each trial, but then began to get slower gradually. When I looked into this more I noticed that most of the sugar crystals were left at the top of the tube.
Tara K
This project was awarded a Meritorious