Chemical Reactions and Heat Investigation

The alka-seltzer in the hot water floated at the top and dissolved the fastest of the three different temperatures of water. This one was at 50 degrees C dissolved quickly within 23 seconds. The room temperature one dissolved slower then the hot water, and the tablet started to float towards the end. The alka seltzer, at 24 degrees C, dissolved in 39 seconds The third, and last, the cold dissolved overall the slowest. The alka-seltzer sunk to the bottom at first, but then started to float at the end. This one, which was only 3 degrees C took 116 seconds to dissolve, or 1:56.

This outcome was probably a result from the amount of energy being released from the water at different temperatures. When the temperature was hot, more of the water was evaporating, so the alka-seltzer responded to that by dissolving faster. This was because there was more energy that could be applied to the tablet. As the temperature lowered, there was less energy being released, so there wasn't that extra "boost" of energy to help dissolve the tablet.

Here is a graph that shows the correlation associated with temperature (aligned along the x-axis) and time taken to dissolve (aligned along the y-axis). As you can see, the higher the temperature is, the time it takes to dissolve is significantly lowers. As the temperature decreases, the amount of time it takes to dissolve increases.