ANALYSIS

Every object, material, and particle may it be in solid, liquid, or gas state,
experiences a change in its dimension accordingly to the change in its temperature.
With an increase in temperature, the material also experiences an increase in its
dimension. Contrary to this, the material contracts when its temperature decreases.
The change in its dimension, both expansion and contraction, can observed in three
different dimensions. When viewing the change in one dimension, the thermal
expansion that the object is seen to be experiencing is linear expansion, which is the
main topic of this experiment. In a two-dimensional perspective, the object is seen
to be experiencing area expansion, while in three dimensions volume expansion is
the word for the change that the object experiences.

Even though the temperature is the main factor in its change in dimensions,
the material at which the object is made of the particle itself also plays a huge role
in the concept of thermal expansion. The type of material that the object is made of
that experiences thermal expansion determines how much the dimension of the
object will change when a specific amount of temperature is added or reduced to it.
This gives the implication that not all objects expand in the same increase of
temperature. One object may take longer to expand than other objects made from a
different material. The state of matter that the object is in also varies. Gases have a
more distributed and wider molecular structure, meaning that its molecules are far
more spread out, compared to liquids and solids, whose molecules are more compact
and compressed. The cohesive forces between the atoms of solids and liquids has a
dynamic balance, which means that higher temperatures give off greater distance
between atoms.
 The equation for thermal expansion is consisted of variables such as the initial
length (L0), area (A0), or volume (V0) of the object, the change in temperature (T)
that the object experiences, which involves both initial (T0) and final (Tf)
temperature, the coefficient of thermal expansion (α), and the final length (Lf) of the
object after a certain amount of time while experiencing the increase in temperature.

𝐿
= 𝛼𝑇 eqn. 1
𝐿0
𝐴
= 𝛼𝑇 eqn. 2
𝐴0
𝑉
= 𝛼𝑇 eqn. 3
𝑉0

In this experiment, the linear expansion of two metal rods, one made from
aluminum and the other made from copper, was measured by subjecting the rods in
heat generated by the steam coming from boiling water. At first, the initial length of
the rods was measured to see the difference in dimensions that will occur when the
temperature is increased. In this case, the temperature of the rod is derived from the
amount of resistance that has. The resistance was obtained with the used of the
thermistor. As observed from the values obtained, as the resistance decreased, the
temperature increased because the resistance between the molecules are weakened
due to the heat that it experiences. After a change in the initial length of the rods was
observed, it was then proven that objects truly expand when it is subjected to heat.
We then proceeded to calculating for the coefficient of linear expansion of the two
rods and comparing it to the actual constant coefficient of linear expansion of the
two materials. In this, we were able to observe a difference in values between the
experimental and accepted values for the coefficient of linear expansion. This is due
to some errors in the equipment used for the experiment and the setup itself.