Conservation of Mass Lab Investigation

Results:

Pop rocks:

Prediction: Won't inflate very much, just enough to fill it with the balloon.

The balloon inflated with CO2 (which we knew because the package says that it is processed with CO2, and we learned that this happens by injecting the pop rock solution with CO2 bubbles and letting them harden in it). The balloon inflated more than I expected, making it about the size of a baseball.

I think that different groups got different sized balloons depending on how compacted their Pop Rocks were, and on whether or not they had stretched their balloons beforehand.

This was not a chemical reaction, because it was just the Pop Rocks being dissolved and the bubbles released.

Vinegar:

This balloon inflated to the size of a small watermelon. The reaction occurred faster than before and released a lot more gas. The reaction also began instantly, the moment we put the baking soda in vinegar. We measured the amount of vinegar after the reaction, and found that there was more. However, there were still quite a lot of bubbles in the vinegar, and this may have accounted for the seemingly extra vinegar because it was extra mass.

Conclusion:

I accepted my hypothesis. This was because the mass didn't change but the gas was released. In this lab, I learned that gathering as much information as possible beforehand helps to lead to more accurate conclusions. This is because I read the lab sheet information and the back of the Pop Rocks package. My group had no problems. In fact, our lab was quite easy and went smoothly. It was a great and easy way to learn about conservation of mass.