HONORS: GRAPHING CANDLE LAB DATA WITH EXCEL

Students have been asked to plot the data from the 'Burning Candle Lab', but may be unsure about steps are necessary to achieved this goal.  

This post attempts to address all of these problems.

First, Mr. Hatfield recommends that his students use a group of programs sometimes called 'Microsoft Office', but more commonly-called Office 365.

Not only is Office 365 available on all FUSD-supplied computers, FUSD students can get up to five FREE copies for their home computer or mobile device.   However, some students are either not aware of this, or they do not know where to go to obtain their free software package, which includes the SPREADSHEET PROGRAM  'Microsoft Excel'.

So let's show you "where to go".   First, go to a search engine and enter this character string:

portal.office.com

This may take you right to Office 365.  But sometimes, instead, it takes you to your student account with OneDrive, and you'll see this screen:

If that happens, look in the upper corner, where it says 'Office 365', and click on that.   When you do that, you should definitely arrive at THIS screen:

Now, if you prefer not to add this program, be aware that all FUSD desktop computers on this campus, including those in the library, typically have 'Office 365' installed on them, including Microsoft Excel, the program we will use to plot and graph data in the 'Burning Candle' Lab.  The one possible hangup is that if you are using a school computer, you might have trouble convincing it to download files from a third-party site.

IN OUR CASE, the third-party site that we will access for this lab is that of my colleague, Mr. Brian Fischer.  HIS web site?

GO to mrfischer.com

First, under 'Chemistry Honors', select Second Semester: Labs.

Then, when 'Labs' are displayed, click 'Burning A Candle graph.'

  
Inside the page for that lab, click 'Burning a Candle', then enter your lab group's mass data in the first pair of boxes.

The result should look something like this:

Students should print out each of the three graphs and glue or tape them into their Composition Book as part of their Lab Report, then answer the two final questions.

So...all of Mr. Hatfield student's should know:

• how to get FREE copies of 'Office 365'
• how to access the spreadsheet on 'mrfischer.com'
• what to do with your 'Burning Candle Lab' data