Biology: Sweating Alcohol

Objectives

• Students will collect data for the cooling rates of water and isopropyl alcohol.
• Students will compare and contrast the cooling rate data, both graphically and numerically.
• Students will predict how human homeostasis would be different if we perspired a liquid other than water.
• Students will draw conclusions about the physical and chemical characteristics of water and how those characteristics impact organisms and the ability of the Earth to sustain life.
• Students will generate linear regression models and compare rates of change from those models.

Vocabulary

• polar
• nonpolar
• cohesion
• solvent
• solute
• solution
• homeostasis

About the Lesson

This activity involves collecting data with a temperature probe as two different liquids cool via evaporation.
As a result, students will:

• Compare the two rates of cooling and predict the physiological and metabolic implications if we, as humans, perspired some liquid other than water.
• Develop a deeper understanding of the properties of water and how those properties allow life to exist.