Scientific Process

Problem: What impact will salt in water do to a ping-pong ball in floating in the water?
Hypothesis:If you add more salt to the water, it will increase the density, which will make the ball float higher.
Experimental Design:
Materials: 
 -Five same size beakers
· A ping-pong ball
· Clay
· Dime
· Water
· Salt
Variables:
Control: The beaker with no amount of salt.
Constant Variables: The amount of water into the beakers, the beakers, the ping-pong ball, amount of clay and the dime.
Independent Variable: The amount of salt added to each beaker.
Dependent Variable: The height the ping-pong ball rise.
Procedure:
First, I had to get the equipment. I was worried that the ping-ping ball was so light that you could not tell any difference how high it floated. Therefore, I attached clay and a dime to the ball to weigh it down. I knew that all my beakers had to be the same so I got five identical beakers from the science lab. The temperature of the water was another variable, so to make sure it was all the same I got a thermometer. Then I used a graduated cylinder and measured out 200 ml for each beaker.
I used Morton’s iodized table salt and put it on a triple beam balance and measured out the amount of salt then poured it into a beaker; I repeated this until I got an amount of salt it takes to saturate 200 ml of water, which was 62 grams. Later I used this formula to make the different percentages of salt water: % _ Part100 ¯ Whole

When I got the sums (15.5[25%], 31[50%], 46.5[75%]), I distributed the amount of salt to the different beakers. Once I did that, I put the ping-pong ball in a beaker and measured it with an inch ruler from the top of the ball, to the surface of the water; I repeated this with all six beakers. Finally, I took the measurements and put them into a chart, and looked it over to see how high the ball rose in the saturated water, and just the normal water.

Observations:
Getting to the saturation point for water and trying to read the height of the ball.
.

Conclusion and Analysis:

I had to measure the height of the ball by using a ruler and measuring from the water level, to the height of the ball. My hypothesis was that if you add more salt the ball would float higher. When I was trying to find the saturation point it was the hardest part of the experiment, because I would have to add little by little amounts of salt to the water so when I get saturation point it would be more accurate. I supported all of the constant variables and even made sure the temperatures of the waters were all the same. The result was that the ball did float higher in the saturated water rather than in the water. This was because of more density being added to the water.