Scientific Investigation - Which Battery Lasts Longest?
We wanted to find out which brand of batteries last longest.
by Sabrina
Photographs by Sheri. 
What we used:
We used three different brand of batteries: Eveready, Coles and Varta.
And we used torches that were the same.
by Susan 
Hypothesis:
Most of us predicted that the eveready battery would last the longest because of the ads on TV. Kyle predicted that the Varta battery would last longest.
Method:
We switched on all the torches at the same time. We recorded what time we turned on the torches.
by Emeline 
Results:
The Coles battery ran out first.
by Cecilia.
Eveready lasted next. Eveready lasted only for 13 hours.
By:Jen.
The Varta battery lasted longest.
by Vicky
Graph by Jenny.
Coles lasted for 3 hours.
The Eveready battery lasted for 13 hours
and the Varta ran out after 16 hours.
by Wally
How much does it cost to run each battery per hour?
The results are that the Coles battery was the cheapest battery but costs more money than the other batteries per hour. Per hour Coles cost, 62 cents.
by Jenny
The Varta battery lasted longest but it costs the same amount as the Eveready battery per hour. They both cost 15 cents per hour.
by Sheri 
April 7th, 2008 at 2:44 am
Hi 3GK class
I dropped past your blog to see how you are going with blogging and was fascinated to read the results of your battery experiment. There is no way I expected there to be such a difference in battery life between the batteries. Do you know how long the Varta battery lasted? Also I was wondering what the price difference of the batteries were? Might be interesting to compare battery life with cost.
Keep up the good work and please let me know if you need any help with your blogging.
Sue Waters
The Edublogger
April 7th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Hello from a Science teacher in Madrid, Spain!
I was really impressed by the quality of your experiment - I wish my students were as careful as you were in setting up - especially the fact that you made sure all torches were the same - We give it the fancy name of “variable control” here in Secondary…
Good question up there from Sue - how much does “one hour of light” cost with each battery? Nice Maths exercise… Congratulations again on your good Science and ICT work!
April 7th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
Mrs Waters and Mr Ribas, thank you for visting our blog.
We are still finding out about your questions.
When we will find out the answer we will tell you.
From Sabrina, Hope, Nezzie and Zobby
April 24th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Great investigations kids! Nice to know my choice of Varta battery is a good one. Although I use Varta rechargeable batteries - I wonder how *they* compare to the others?
April 29th, 2008 at 9:43 am
Hello 3GK bloggers,
Great investigation! I’m going to show my class of 5th graders the great work you’ve done here. Thanks for sharing your learning.
Prof. McGonagall from Dragonblogs
ps All my students have book character nicknames, too!
April 29th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Thank you for visiting our Basketball Without Borders site.
We appreciate your advice and will do our best to make our site better. We have upcoming interviews from basketball players who played for Harvard University and UCLA, both division one in the NCAA. So drop by and listen to the interviews they will be good. ^^
By the way, your site looks very interesting. I think it’s cool to show how to do all the cool labs. Anyways, hope to see you soon on our site!
Thanks.
May 6th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Isn’t science fun? I love this experiment. Do you have the Energizer Bunny there? http://www.energizer.com/energizer-bunny/Pages/bunny-history.aspx
He might be upset to learn that a Voles battery lasts longer!
May 18th, 2008 at 12:53 am
A question for the class:
Do you think using one of each battery will be provide reliable data from which to draw conclusions?
I’m trying to teach my class fair testing at present so I’m interested to know what you think.
MrWoody
May 20th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
To Mrs C,
Professor McGonagall and
Jaeho
Thank you for visiting our blog. We will visit your blog soon.
And I love basket-ball by the way Jaeho
By Hope
May 20th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
Mr. Genereux
Yes science is fun. No the Energizer Bunny is not here because it doesn’t
‘Keep on Going and Going’.
By Sheri
May 20th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
Mr Woody,
Mr. Lee, our scientist at school told our class to test the experiment 2-3 times but we didn’t know that before. Our teacher didn’t know how old the batteries were when she bought them that maybe that’s why eveready didn’t last as long like our class guessed.
by Taz, Sheri and Hope
May 23rd, 2008 at 8:33 pm
Scientists always use triplicates in experiments i.e. in your situation that means 9 of the same torches. 3 using Eveready, 3 using Coles and 3 using Varta and results are represented as the average e.g. average time Coles battery lasted.
Scientists do this to ensure that their results truly representative of what is being tested. For example by having 3, if one result is very different from the other 2 you can examine why there is a difference and don’t make conclusions based on incorrect results.
My work involves lots of science as I am a fish farmer. We use scientific investigations to make decisions to improve how we grow our fish. For example which feed do the fish grow faster on and does the feed that the fish grow faster on cost more or less to farm the fish. Wrong decision means that our fish grow too slowly and it costs us too much money to produce them - all of which can make us go out of business.
I think you have all done an excellent job with your experiment and am really grateful that you shared the results with us. I’m now happy now in the knowledge that Eveready is cost efficient and lasts a long time. Would love to know how the Energizer battery compares?
June 9th, 2008 at 11:57 pm
Great Job!
I am happy to see a passionate teacher working with kids.
You are welcome to join http://passionateteachers.ning.com
Cheers.