Thank you for the link ... I was especially interested in the water screen method that the experimenters used to prevent surface heating of the gas containers. I might be able to set up something similar to that. If a large glass pan of water is too impractical, a pane of insulating glass...
Sylas -
The report on Tyndall's work is fascinating - it illustrates that regardless of the level of technology utilized, good experimental design is the key to getting meaningful results. I particularly like the salt plugs and cold water jacket concepts, which address sources of error...
Hi Susan,
I agree with you that a heat lamp emits IR in addition to visible light - obviously, the IR emitted from a heat lamp is much higher proportionally in comparison to a normal incandescent bulb or sunlight.
I'm not saying that all of the IR energy is absorbed by the plastic and then...
Ten degrees ! That is a huge difference (I'm assuming it's degrees Fahrenheit). It seems like we have a pretty similar setup - I'm using 1.5 gallon plastic containers (the plastic is the same thickness as the plastic of a soda bottle) with a six inch diameter, screw-on, air-tight lid - so...
Sylas, thank you very much for your analysis - you point out some of the problems with these experiments that bother me a lot and that I've tried to address. These conceptual flaws seem so great to me that I wonder how anyone can achieve the expected results consistently using the procedures...
I recently came across several apparently reputable sources (e.g., NASA, PBS) that describe a simple, elegant experiment intended to demonstrate carbon dioxide's role as a greenhouse gas. Each of them involves two sealed containers with thermometers - one containing air, the other containing...