Sleek Posted July 9, 2017 Report Share Posted July 9, 2017 G'day tigers. I've run into a bit of a massive pickle basically. For my Chemistry IA, I reckon I've bitten of significantly more than I'm able to comfortably or even uncomfortably chew. The only thing I knew going into the Chem IA was that if I did a titration based prac I was probably going to commit seppuku, or hold my face over a bunsen burner, and so with that in mind I decided to investigate "The effect percentage composition of tin has on the electrical conductivity of lead based solder' which sounds nice and pretentious for the bigwigs. The problem that I've run into dearest fellow IB masochists, is that, after melting down and casting a whole bunch of different %Tin and Lead alloys , I've now discovered that given that I've casted them into small 5g round ingots, their electrical resistance is negligible when I try and test them with a multimeter, even just the straight lead and straight tin test the same. The only possible solution I can think of is maybe drawing them into some kind of wire? But I've got both no idea or means to do that, or concrete knowledge of if it would even help As such, I'm left with about 7 different samples of different percentage tin and lead alloys, and no independent variable. Is there anyway you genius friends can think of salvaging this train-wreck of an IA? Or possibly a different more sensitive tool to test their conductivity that I've missed (besides 3 digit multimeter)? I'm incredibly sorry if I've come across flippant, I assure you it's just a sign of panic. Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
kw0573 Posted July 9, 2017 Report Share Posted July 9, 2017 (edited) Forgive me for saying this, but your topic wasn't that strong anyways. I think it's best if you find some quick and easy experimentation. If you are keen on doing electricity-related IA you can always do it on redox. Edited July 9, 2017 by kw0573 Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sleek Posted July 10, 2017 Author Report Share Posted July 10, 2017 Is it not? Ah well, I thought I would've had rather a lot to talk about given both electron-phonon coupling, phase diagrams and the anomaly of the conductivity of Sn and Pb. Thank you so much for your advice though, is there an experiment off the top of your head for redox that might be suitable? Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
kw0573 Posted July 10, 2017 Report Share Posted July 10, 2017 Wow you know more theory than I thought. The resistivity of both lead and tin are in the magnitude of 10-8 ohm meter. This is very hard to measure using high school equipment. You can try to do other physical tests on the ingots. I cannot suggest you a topic but you can look around the forum and online for idea. 1 Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sleek Posted July 14, 2017 Author Report Share Posted July 14, 2017 All good, thank you very much indeed for your time, I managed to find the data I was looking for in a database, and may just do my IA based on that. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day 1 Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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