Acetone & Water melting a foam cup Experiment.

Try this out! Take a foam cup and some acetone, or nail polish remover. Then, put on a plate some acetone, and on top of it, the foam cup. It will literally melt, and form a weird kind of clay! Isn’t it cool?

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How fast can a foam cup melt with different amount of acetone?

IV (independent variable): Different amount of acetone.                                                                                                                 DV (dependent variable): How fast the foam cup melts?

Now, try this same thing increasing the amount of acetone.                                                                                                           My Hypothesis was that the foam cup would melt faster as it had more liquid helping it out. And it was true!     We increases the amount of acetone, timed how fast the cup melted, and it was faster each time.

10 millimeters of acetone 15 millimeters of acetone 20 millimeters of acetone
56 seconds for the glass to melt 50 seconds for the glass to melt 40 seconds for the glass to melt

Based on our data, we can conclude that by increasing the amount of acetone, the foam cup will melt faster and easier.

This a chart of our process:                                                                                                                                                                   https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GrnkT9-sd6StQsNPhpFVVAw9GjW7Z-OrBZAJe_rlN9c/edit

How fast would the foam glass melt if we add to the acetone a little bit of water?

IV: Amount of water.                                                                                                                                                                               DV: How fast will the foam cup melt?

Once you have tried this experiment, try to do it again but changing things. Instead of just putting acetone to your plate, add some water to it. Before I did it, my hypothesis was: Water isn’t going to affect the acetone at all, so maybe the acetone will make the foam cup melt slower.

5 ml of acetone & 5 ml of water 10 ml of acetone & 5 ml of water 10 ml of acetone & 1 ml of water
NO reaction NO reaction NO REACTION!

Well, no at all! Even if we added 1 milliliter of water to 10 milliliters of acetone, the foam cup wouldn’t melt! Do you want to know why?: Water has a higher boiling point (100 C) than acetone does, (56 C), due to the hydrogen boiling molecules between them. That’s why!

Based on our data, we can conclude that water is more powerful that acetone when they come together.

This is a chart of our process:                                                                                                                                                               https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WED4YufIOjRlBB-PyqJoqzusRm-IStsuwvirTt80r-E/edit

That’s all of our experiment “Acetone & Water melting a foam cup Experiment.” !