What is the purpose of the specific heat lab?

What is the purpose of the specific heat lab?

Purpose: The purpose of this experiment is to determine the specific heat of a metal and compare it to the actual value.

What is the concept of specific heat all about?

specific heat, the quantity of heat required to raise the temperature of one gram of a substance by one Celsius degree. The units of specific heat are usually calories or joules per gram per Celsius degree. For example, the specific heat of water is 1 calorie (or 4.186 joules) per gram per Celsius degree.

How do you determine specific heat experimentally?

Specific Heat Capacity Practical

  1. Place a beaker on a balance and press zero.
  2. Now add the oil to the beaker and record the mass of the oil.
  3. Read the starting temperature of the oil.
  4. Connect a joulemeter to the immersion heater.
  5. Time for thirty minutes.

What is the experiment to measure the the specific heat capacity of a liquid?

To determine the specific heat capacity of another liquid, you could pour a measured mass of the hot liquid into the calorimeter (whose heat capacity is now known), and measure the fall in temperature of the liquid and the rise in temperature of the calorimeter, and hence deduce the specific heat capacity of the liquid …

How specific heat capacity can be experimentally determined?

To determine the specific heat capacity of another metal, for example, iron, one can warm an iron specimen (of measured mass) to 100 °C, and then drop it into the copper calorimeter, which contains water at room temperature, t1 °C, and then measure the final temperature t2 °C to which the iron cools down and the copper …

What information can be obtained from a calorimetry experiment?

Calorimetry is used to measure the amount of thermal energy transferred in a chemical or physical process. This requires careful measurement of the temperature change that occurs during the process and the masses of the system and surroundings.

How do you find the specific heat capacity of water experiment?

1. Given that the specific heat capacity of the calorimeter ccal is known, the specific heat capacity of water cw can be calculated from the following equation: Electrical energy supplied = energy gained by water + energy gained by calorimeter Q = mwcw + mcalccal .

How is specific heat used in chemistry?

Specific heat is the amount of heat energy required to raise the temperature of a body per unit of mass. Specific heat is also known as specific heat capacity or mass specific heat. In SI units, specific heat (symbol: c) is the amount of heat in joules required to raise 1 gram of a substance 1 Kelvin.

How does specific heat affect temperature change?

Specific heat is defined by the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of 1 gram of a substance 1 degree Celsius (°C). Water has a high specific heat, meaning it takes more energy to increase the temperature of water compared to other substances.

What experiment could you do to measure the specific heat capacity of a metal?

Record the temperature of the metal block every minute. After ten minutes the temperature will still rise even though the heater has been turned off and then it will begin to cool. Record the highest temperature that it reaches and calculate the temperature rise during the experiment.

How is heat measured experimentally?

3.4 Calculations

  1. Qw = -Qs Where Q is the change in heat. Using specific heat of water and the mass of water being used, we can express the above more informatively.
  2. Qw = cwmw(Tpeak – Tinitial)w = -Qs = csms(Tpeak – Tinitial)s
  3. cs = cwmwΔTw / msΔTs

How do you find the specific heat capacity of water experimentally?

Method

  1. Place one litre (1 kg) of water in the calorimeter.
  2. Place the immersion heater into the central hole at the top of the calorimeter.
  3. Clamp the thermometer into the smaller hole with the stirrer next to it.
  4. Fully insulate the calorimeter by wrapping it loosely with cotton wool.
  5. Record the temperature of the water.

Why is the calorimetry experiment important?

Abstract. Calorimetry is an important method of biological analysis. Calorimetry is widely used in chemical reaction and the measuring method of biochemical reactions. The main advantage of calorimetry is that it needn’t sophisticated equipment, and it can measure tiny energy changes.

What is the theory of specific heat capacity?

In thermodynamics, the specific heat capacity (symbol cp) of a substance is the heat capacity of a sample of the substance divided by the mass of the sample, also sometimes referred to as massic heat capacity.

What is the importance of knowing the heat content of a certain reaction?

Measuring the true heat of reaction is the basis to understanding the progress of chemical reactions, their kinetics and its hazard potential.

How do you find the specific heat capacity of an experiment?

Steps to determine the specific heat capacity.

  1. Place a beaker on a balance and press zero.
  2. Now add the oil to the beaker and record the mass of the oil.
  3. Read the starting temperature of the oil.
  4. Connect a joulemeter to the immersion heater.
  5. Time for thirty minutes.

What is the conclusion of the specific heat lab?

Specific Heat Lab Conclusion In this lab, a piece of metal was first weighed, then suspended into a beaker of boiling water placed over a Bunsen burner for five minutes. The temperature of the water in the beaker and the water placed in the calorimeter was recorded.

What should the graph of specific heat capacity look like?

The graph should look like a concave curve downwards. Specific heat, we have found, is inversely proportional to atomic weight. This means that an increase in atomic mass will bring a decrease in specific heat capacity, and vice versa. This makes sense because atomic mass is basically the mass of a particle of an element.

How do you calculate specific heat of a solid?

The amount of heat required to raise the temperature of a solid body depends on its change in temperature (ΔT), its mass ( m ), and an intrinsic characteristic of the material forming the body called specific heat ( cp ). The heat is calculated from the equation The unit for cp is thus heat per unit mass per unit temperature.

How does weight affect specific heat of an element?

As the weight of the element goes up, its specific heat will decrease because the energy is divided between more mass, causing the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature to go down. You can also see this relationship in the formula itself: q/ (m* t).