Lab report for Surface Tension experiment

Oisin Maguire 22/2/2013

Abstract In this experiment a red laser is used to determine the surface tension of water 72 9 mN with washing up liquid 60 6 mN , salt 81 6 mN and m m m at dierent temperatures as well as acetone 26 9 mN , de-ionised water m 75 9 mN and oil (Crisp and Dry cooking oil). m

Contents
I Introduction to experiment 3
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1 Theory

II

Data and data analysis

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2 Experimental data 3 Data analysis

III IV

Conclusion Appendices

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Part I

Introduction to experiment
1 Theory
Surface tension arises in all liquids at the boundary of the liquid and the interface of a secondary medium. Water has a high surface tension due to water being a polar liquid and as such there is inter-atomic forces between the molecules in water these are a type of Van Der Waals force called hydrogen bonds which is a dipole dipole bond.

Figure 1: Illustration of the di-pole of water

In the diagram above the delta plus and minus respectfully are the areas of positive and negative charge. The centre of positive and negative charge are separated thus there is a electric dipole moment vector symbolised by the pointing in the direction of the separation of the positive and negative charges. The formula below illustrates how the electric dipole moment depends on the separation of the centre of positive and negative charge for two equally charged points. =qd (1) In the equation above each charge has the charge of q, the distance between the two charges is d and the resultant electric dipole moment vector is . In the case of liquid water the electric dipole moments line up at the interface of the liquid water and the secondary medium as too minimise the energy required to maintain the shape and thus the alignment of the electric dipole moments is were liquid water gets its surface tension. The electric dipole of water also 3

has another very interesting eect under freezing as the dipole will try to a line in a way to minimise the internal energy of the too be solid if the process is allowed to take place in the right conditions snow akes can form. Snow akes 1 are the end result of the fractal designed building blokes which lead to very dierent patterns that all have the same basis. If however impurities are added

Figure 2: Fractal design of water

to water such as salt or washing up liquid, these impurities will change the surface tension. In the case of adding salt to water the addition of the ionic crystals, that quickly dissipate through the liquid due to the electric dipole moment of water ripping the ions apart the image below illustrates the process. The addition of the salt increases the random distribution of ions this increases

Figure 3: Salt dissolving in water

the total electric dipole moment of the entire liquid as a hole and thus since
1 http

: //www.schools.manatee.k12.f l.us/boehm/snowf lakecurve/snowf lakef ractall essonp lan.html

the electric dipole moment of the liquid increases so does the surface tension. On the other hand washing up liquid is a large molecule with a small electric dipole at one end of the molecule with a non-polar end on the other-side of the molecule, the addition of the washing up liquid decreases the electric dipole moment and thus the surface tension of water with washing up liquid dissolved in it is lower than pure water. Acetone has a electric dipole moment but it is smaller than that of water therefore the surface tension of acetone is expected to be less than water but higher than oil. In the case of oil the surface tension is lower as oil is a non-polar liquid and thus has no permanent electric dipole but due to the variation of the electrons moving about in a molecule the electrons can case a instantaneous dipole and thus induce a dipole in another adjacent molecule this is called a London force which is another type of Van Der Waals force. In this experiment the surface of the liquid is made to oscillate by using a needle to penetrate the liquid multiply times a second. This oscillation will case a circular wave pattern to emanate from the needle like dropping a stone in a pond and watching the ripples dissipate. If coherent light is used to illuminate this oscillation the light undergoes a diraction analogue to the diraction pattern of a diraction grating. If we assume that the diracted light illuminates a surface a lot further away than the distance between adjacent nodes in the circular wave pattern on the surface of the liquid we may assume Fraunhofer diraction. In this experiment the previous assumption is valid since the nodes are on the order of a millimetre in separation while the distance to the image was formed is of the order of metres away a million times dierent. The dispersion relation in this experiment can be written in the form
2

Ak 3

(2)

In the above equation A is the surface tension of the liquid, is the density of the liquid, is the angular frequency = 2 were is the frequency of oscillation and k is the wave-vector. If we take the log of the equation above we get the following relation. ln( ) = 3 1 A lnk + ln 2 2 (3)

Were if we now plot this function we get a linear plot. In the equations above k is given by the following formula k= 2 r r r sin( [sin( ) + sin( + )]) 2 2 2 (4)

Were r is the angle between the 0th order reection and the 1st order diraction caused by the cylindrical waves is the wavelength of the incident light from the laser and is the angle of incidence of the laser light.

Part II

Data and data analysis

2 Experimental data
The apparatus was set up as illustrated below.

Figure 4: Illustration of apparatus

A picture of the actual apparatus is below to illustrate how the lasers were set up to have a nearly horizontal angle of incidence on the various liquids.

Figure 5: Experimental setup

The frequency generator was also set up to the oscilloscope as to determine the actual frequency rather than reading the frequency o of the analogue frequency generator.

Figure 6: Oscilloscope and frequency generator A mirror was used as to increase the distance between the aperture (the needle vibrating on the liquid surface) and the image that was formed on the wall beside the frequency generator. The mirror causes a phase shift of ,i, but since the entire image undergoes the same phase shift it doesnt eect the end results. The error on determining the separation between the maxima of the diraction pattern was minimised by using graph paper as illustrated below.

Figure 7: Minimising error with graph paper In the image the error in reading the centre of each peak is minimised by 7

using the graph paper but there still persists error in reading the centre of the middle peak due to the saturation of the camera as demonstrated by the white spot in the centre of the central red spot. The distance between the central peak and subsequent order peaks was measured by reading the distance in millimetres between the peaks in the pictures. The distance between the aperture and the formed image was measured by a measuring tape and was determined to be 9.2 0.2metres.

Data analysis
x 2 x x x ) + b 2 ( )2 + 2 ab 2 ( )( ) a b a b

The propagation of error formula is given by x 2 = a 2 ( (5)

Which is true for any function x = f (a, b). For the case of surface tension the equivalent formula for x is given by
2

A=

k3

(6)

But q is of order unity and doesnt change signicantly for any of the liquids in this experiment and also q doesnt change signicantly over the temperature range in this experiment.
2

= A =

k3

(7)

The distance to the wall and the height of the central maximum can be measured a lot more precisely percentage wise than the location of the centre of each of the peaks in the diraction pattern. Therefore the error in the surface tension is given by 2 A = 2 2h 3 (8) ( (h2 +l2 ) ) Were is the frequency of which the speaker is oscillating at, frequency of the speaker = 2 is the angular (9)

h is the height from the horizontal plane of which the top of the liquid is oscillating to the central maxima, is the wavelength of the laser and l is the distance from the centre of the cylindrical waves propagating across the liquid to where the image is formed.

Part III

Conclusion
The diagram below is of the surface tension for water and de ionised water at varying temperatures.

Figure 8: Temperature Dependence on Surface Tension for water

In the above gure the solid red line is the data collected for de ionised water with the dotted pink line being the line of best t to the data collected, The solid aqua colour line is the data collected for tap water with the dotted red line being the line of best t to the data. In the above gure it is clear that the surface tension of water decreases with increasing the temperature of the water this is most probably from thermal uctuations causing the individual water molecules vibrating further from there equilibrium position when more energy (i.e. higher temperature) is added to the system. The value for the surface tension when 1 ml of washing up liquid was added

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to 500 ml of de ionised water was determined to be 60 6 mN m this large drop in surface tension is due to the reduction of the electric dipole moment of the liquid as a hole while when 1 gram of salt was de-solved in 500 ml of water the surface tension of the liquid was determined to be 81 6 mN m which is an increase in surface tension due to the introduction of the salt which de-solved readily in the water adding more randomly distributed ions which increases the electric dipole moment thus increasing the surface tension. If however more and more salt or washing up liquid is added to water the increase in impurities will have less and less of an impact on the surface tension which will conform to an exponential decay of the form x = eax Which is graphically represented below. (10)

Figure 9: Illistration of the change in surface tension due to added impurities

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The surface tension of acetone was determined to be 25.587 9.242 mN m which is indeed less than the surface tension of water. The value of the surface tension of acetone was taken at 17 degrees Celsius, acetone should not be heated up as acetone readily vaporises is ammable and is irritating to humans when inhaled. Unfortunately when trying to determine the surface tension of crisp and dry cooking oil as to verify that oil has a lower surface tension than both water and acetone the diraction pattern caused by the oil was tiny even when the beam was reected o two mirrors which is a distance of about 17 metres. The surface tension of oil could have been measured using Capillary ascension or by using a Goniometer. For capillary action the formula for surface tension is given by hrg (11) A= 2cos() where is the density of the liquid, h is the height the liquid rises in the capillary r is the radius of the capillary tube, g is the local acceleration due to gravity and is the angle between the wall of the capillary tube and the liquid inside the capillary tube. By rearranging the formula for determining the surface tension of a liquid as to determine the wavelength of a laser using a liquid of know surface tension and using the following formula for the error on the wavelength of the laser light = 2h

1/3 2 (h A2 2

(12) + l2 )

Were the symbols have there usual meaning and using a green laser the laser was found to have a wavelength of 550 100nm this is in agreement with the accepted value for green light of around 530nm. I also attempted to determine the wavelength of a blue laser with no success as the coherence length of the laser was to short as to determine the distance in separation of the interference pattern.

Figure 10: Determination of wavelength of a green laser

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Part IV

Appendices
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References
[1] The advanced laboratory manual , UCD Physics Lab [2] Introduction to uids 103 on youtube , Oisin Magurie

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