Results:
The "perfect" ratio I foud through math did end up working the best, for my results at least 5g of baking soda and 55g of vinager was the "perfect" ratio, it brought us to a height of 56cm. Where as 3g baking soda and 57g vinegar only reached the height of 50cm.
Trial 1:
5g Baking Soda
55g Vinager
Height: 56 cm
Trial 2:
3g Baking Soda
57g Vinager
Height: 50 cm
Trial 3:
11g Baking Soda
49g Vinegar
Height: 65 cm
Trial 4:
10g Baking Soda
50g Vinegar
Height: 70 cm
Discussion: Revised
I knew my height was the best height, because I trust the math, but when we looked at other teams results their "perfect" ratio it didn't work the same for them. We took some of their results, to compare to ours and they didn't seem reasonable because for us the "perfect" ratio was correct. Something must have gone for either our experiment or ours. Before conducting the experiment, I did out the math finding that we would need 4.8g baking soda for every 55.2g vinager. We found the ratio by first finding what a mole of C2H402 weighs (84g) and what a mole of NaHCO3 weighs (60g). We then had to calculate the delution of both the vinegar and the baking soda. We just had to multiply the percent of dilution then divide the wieght of mole of the NaHCO3 or C2H4O2. For Vinegar it was 5% dilution so it was 60/.05 which came out to 1200g. There are plenty of sources of error, human error was the biggest. My partner and I were incharge of deluting the baking soda with flour, we could have easily added to much flour or to little. The other thing is that, our scales don't go to the tenth or the hundreth, so we couldn't do 4.8g baking soda and 55.2g vinager. If I could do this experiment again, I would do more than two tests, and do the "perfect" ratio to the exact decimal. I learned how to do an experiment with only paper and pencil, how to do the math before the actual experiment. I learned how to find the "perfect" ratio, for any amout of chemicals, with a Periodic Table of Elements, pencil, paper and calculator.