The Insulating Properties of Materials
By E. Robert Schulman
Alexandria, Virginia, USA.
Abstract
Newsprint has superior thermal insulation properties when compared to corrugated fiberboard or air cellular cushioning material.
Introduction
Schulman, Cox, and Schulman (1999) examined the stacking properties of toroids that reflect radiation in the 1.8 to 2.8 eV energy range. The junior author of that paper had an age of 0.9167 yr at the time that study was performed. This paper documents a follow-up study that the researcher peformed when she had an age of 11.1667 yr.
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Corrugated fiberboard, air cellular cushioning material, and newsprint were circumferentially arranged around synthetic polymerization vessels filled with solid dihydrogen monoxide. The vessels and materials were placed in cylindrical containers. Vessels outside of containers provided experimental controls. Three trials were conducted simultaneously. The experimental set-up is shown in Figure 1.
Prior to the commencement of the experiment, each of the twelve vessels was filled with 59 ml of liquid dihydrogen monoxide and reduced to a temperature of 255 K for 57 kiloseconds, which converted the liquid dihydrogen monoxide to solid dihydrogen monoxide.
The vessels were placed in the experimental set-up as described above and allowed to progress towards thermodynamic equilibrium for 7.2 kiloseconds. The liquid dihydrogen monoxide was removed from the vessels after this point and the mass of the remaining solid dihydrogen monoxide was measured.
The vessels were replaced and allowed to progress towards thermodynamic equilibrium for a further 3.6 kiloseconds, after which the mass of the remaining solid dihydrogen monoxide was measured again. The heat transferred was calculated by assuming a specific latent heat of fusion of 334 J/g for dihydrogen monoxide.
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The heat transferred between 7.2 kiloseconds and 10.8 kiloseconds was 4.12±2.12 J for the control, 4.79±1.39 J for the air cellular cushioning material, 3.45±1.07 J for the corrugated fiberboard, and 3.34±0.58 J for the newsprint. A graphical representation of the data can be found in Figure 2. The slope of each line indicates the heat transferred for the corresponding sample.
Anomolous Results
Corrugated fiberboard sample 2 had significantly less solid dihydrogen monoxide at 7.2 and 10.8 kiloseconds than the other two corrugated fiberboard samples, although it exhibited a similar rate of heat transfer to corrugated fiberboard sample 1.
Air cellular cushioning material sample 2 exhibited the greatest rate of heat transfer of all the samples (0.619 mW greater than than mean of the control samples).
Control sample 2 exhibited the smallest rate of heat transfer of all the samples (0.464 mW smaller than the mean of the newsprint samples).
The tendency for sample 2 to be anomolous is not currently understood.
Conclusion
Newsprint has superior thermal insulation properties when compared to corrugated fiberboard or air cellular cushioning material. In addition, this research showed that junior researchers can be surprisingly adamant about not utilizing obfuscative nomenclature in their research reports, thus requiring senior researchers to compose their own versions.
Read the researcher's version of this report.
About the author: Dr. Eric Schulman is a PhD astronomer who attended Mar Vista Elementary School in Los Angeles, California, USA. His favourite subjects are science and humor. His first paper was published in 1988 (he collected the data and wrote up the results on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, USA). In his spare time he likes to read. One of his favourite people is Caroline Cox (the American PhD astronomer, not to be confused with the British Deputy Speaker of the House of Lords). One of his favorite books is A Briefer History of Time (the 1999 science humor book by Eric Schulman, not to be confused with the 2005 popular science book by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow).
Eric's other articles are much more digestible. Read them here.
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