Lab 4.2 Heating and Cooling Curves of Lauric Acid

Now that you have had the chance to digest the heating and cooling curve process a little bit, I am going to ask you guys to think about what happened in the process. Here are two graphs produced from Jake Eggleston and Nate Gillian's data.






Paragraph #1: Take a look at the graph that you made as a result of the data that you collected. Identify the melting point of lauric acid from the above graph. Identify the freezing point from the second graph that you made [many of you put the on the same axis, which is fine]. Are these two values the same (and should they be the same)? Explain how you determined the freezing and melting points from your data.

Paragraph #2: As you heat a substance to its melting point and through the phase change there are changes that occur in both kinetic and potential energy. Explain what kinetic energy is and when it is increasing during your heating curve and decreasing in your cooling curve. Explain what potential energy is, and also explain when it is increasing and decreasing in your curves.

Enrichment:

Lauric acid of course has an actual melting point. Find the actual melting point and compare it to your data. Calculate the percent error and predict a reason why you were high or low (the thermometers are accurate, so don't blame them.)

Find out more about lauric acid. Maybe what it is used for, or could potentially be used for, find its chemical formula, structure, anything relevant about the chemical. Reference the source that you used to find the information.