Diffusion Investigation

When evaluating the results from Investigations 1 and 2, it can be seen that the most influencing factor on the percentage of diffusion was the different surface area of the agar. As predicted in the second hypothesis, the 1cm cube had the highest diffusion percentage with 21.6% of the cube being affected in 8 minutes. This is a significant difference of 18.17% when compared to the 2cm cube’s diffusion percentage of 3.43 and a 20.38% difference from the 2.5cm cube’s result of 1.22%. Investigation 1’s results show that the most successful concentration of acid to diffuse through the phenolphthalein was the 1M with a percentage of 1.81. This is a 0.47% difference from the results of the 2M sulfuric acid. Graph 2 demonstrates that the diffusion percentage continued to incline when the concentration increased however starts to decrease past the 1.8 point. These results were unexpected and so a fifth trial was run in order

Overall there were four different methods, two of which can be seen above, each measuring the diffusion of the sulfuric acid. The first method used to measure the impact that influencing factors had on the rate of diffusion was going to be used universally. It focused of cutting the clear agar from the cube and measuring the remaining phenolphthalein to then determine how far the acid diffused into the block. Once testing, this became difficult to obtain exact results and the 20 second intervals between the agars resulted in a busy and cramped work space. For the method Investigation 2, 1cm, 2cm and 3cm blocks were originally planned to be used. However, because majority of the cubes were roughly pre-cut small, the 3cm block was unavailable and so, had to be substituted in for the next largest which was a 2.5cm cube. The third and fourth attempts are the methods that can be referred to in the above investigations and were successful in producing