Experiment

Pre-Lab Questions 6

Topic: Specific Heat

Objective: To enable the students to state and differentiate important concepts and terms

so that Experiment 6 can be carried out meaningfully.

After answering these questions, the students will be able to

1. define heat capacity and specific heat of a substance.

2. describe the method of mixtures to determine the specific heats.

3. write an equation relating the variables involved in determining the specific heats of a metal.

4. state the underlying conservation law used in determining c.

PRE-LAB Questions 6

Answer the following questions and submit your group answer to the instructor.

1. Define heat capacity and specific heat of a substance? State the SI units for these quantities.

2. What is the method of mixtures and how is it used to determine the specific heat?

3. What are the possible sources of error of the mixture method? Would this be random or systematic errors?

4. A metal of mass mx with an initial high temperature Tx is added to water in a calorimeter, where both the water (mw) and the calorimeter and stirrer (mcs) are at an initial temperature of Tw which is lower than Tx. The mixture of metal and water inside the calorimeter is stirred until the system is in thermal equilibrium at temperature Tf. By assuming that all the heat from the metal is transferred to the water, calorimeter and stirrer without any heat loss to the surrounding, show that the specific heat of the metal is given by:

[pic] ……………1

where cx, cw and Ccs are the specific heats of the metal, water and calorimeter plus stirrer respectively.

5. What is the underlying conservation law used to derive equation 1 in step 3.

Experiment 6

Topic: Specific Heats

Objective: To determine the specific heat of a metal.

Learning Outcomes of Experiment 6

After doing the experiment, the students will be able to...