Today we looked at 2 different liquids and how they were affected by kinetic energy or heat. Substances which are made of particles bump into other particles and transfer energy making them go faster or slower. When particles are hit by particles that are moving faster they speed up and particles that were fast slow down. When particles move faster they become warmer and expand. We saw this today with the use of alcohol and water in very thin tubes. We heated the beaker which caused the water's particles to move faster, which made the test tubes particles move fast which made the liquid in the test tubes move faster. Once they began to move faster the particles no longer want to be as close to each other so they increase in volume causing the liquids to go up the tubes. The red liquid (alcohol) climbed much higher up the tube than the blue tube (water) because alcohol's particles are more easily sped up than water's. We did this demonstration to show how a thermometer works. Thermometer's measure temperature and temperature is the average kinetic energy of a substance.
