Lab: Specific Heat

Goal: To measure specific heat of one or more substances

Materials and Equipment:

• Your calorimeter (cups, beaker, lid, thermometer) from the Calorimetry experiment.
• Pot for heating water
• Metal sample. You can use your tension pendulum rods, or copper pennies with dates before 1982 (post-1982 pennies are not solid copper).

Procedure

1. Reassemble your calorimeter and put 100 mL of cool water in the cup. (If you use a different amount, convert to mL). Record the amount as m_w.
2. Stir until a constant temperature is reached. Record this temperature as T_w.
3. Put 1 quart of water in your pot
4. Determine the mass of your metal sample to the nearest gram or better. (Use your scale if you can reassemble it!). If you use coins, be sure that you check the mint dates. Coins minted after 1981 may be "sandwiched" with a layer of zinc. Record the amount as m_s.
5. Add your mass of dry metal to a heat-proof small jar, test tube, or boil proof bag. Close the container.
6. Place the container in the pot of water, and bring the water bath to a boil. Heat the metal 10-15 minutes this way.
7. If you have a second thermometer, determine the temperature of the hot water bath. Otherwise, assume that it is 100 °C. This is T_s
8. Remove the container using tongs or water-proof heat gloves, quickly open it and dump the dry hot metal into the calorimeter water. Don't get any water from the sides of the metal container in your calorimeter!
9. Close the calorimeter quickly, and stir constantly. Record the highest temperature reached as T_f.

Data Handling

1. Determine the change in temperature of the water as T_w -T_f = T_wf.
2. Determine the change in temperature of the metal as T_s -T_f = T_sf.
3. The calorimeter constant you calculated previously is B. The heat capacity of water (C_w) is 1.00 calorie/gK.
4. The heat capacity of your metal sample is

C = - T_wf * (B - m_w* C_w)/m_s * T_sf.

Report

1. Describe your materials, equipment, an procedures in sufficient detail that your fellow students could repeat your experiment.
2. Report your data. Be sure to indicate the amount of error in your measurements. For example, if you can only measure a mass of 25h within 1g, your error would be 25 ± 1, or 1/25 = 4%.
3. Present your data in an organized form, preferably in a table, in such a way it is easy to compare results as you repeat trials or vary a specific contributing factor.
4. Show a sample calculation, if you have calculated values.
5. If you did a series of experiments, varying something by increasing or decreasing a factor, try to plot your data (y-axis) as a function of the factor (x-axis).
6. You may use a spreadsheet to calculate your information and create your table.
7. Summarize your results.
8. Draw conclusions about what is happening.
9. Suggest at least one way to improve your experiment.

Post your report to the Lab thread at the Moodle Lab Assignment for this Unit.

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