Clovers In The Atmosphere

the bomb calorimeter is more fun than the freeze drier! I am having that imposter feeling like I am a little kid imagining what being a scientist is like. everything is made up of energy in the form of chemical bonds. Breaking these bonds releases heat. This is the act of burning something. usually, not all the bonds are broken (imcomplete combustion) and so we have stuff left over (ash, sludge, whatever). the bomb calorimeter ensures this by surrouding your half gram of fish with 40 atmospheres of pure oxygen. the metal cylinder is an actual bomb with a fuse. you put this is water and light the fuse using electricity. there is a fantastic explosion inside the apparatus that you never get to see, and the bucket of water that surrounds the bomb starts to get hotter. how much hotter it gets determines how much energy was in your fish (after you correct for the burning of the fuse wire and some accessory acid production using titration). no the crazy part that makes you believe in human progress is not the fantastically smooth and beautifully machined bomb which can withstand the explosion (although it is terrible and beautiful) it is the jacket. in order to avoid the heat that is produced by the bomb and goes into the surrounding water simply dissipating, that water is surrounded by other water that is listening electronically to the temperature of the water adjacent to the bomb. when the bomb water gets hotter, the jacket water is heated to match the temperature rise exactly allowing the full heat of combustion to register as temperature increase in the known mass of water. engineering scientists are fantastically smart.