Question

Explain using your own words how you could find the specific heat of a liquid. Be detailed. Your response should be in the format of a lab investigation that someone else could follow.

Answer 1

Hey there!

I hope you have an idea what specific heat capacity is. Specific heat capacity of any material or a substance is the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of 1 kg of that substance by 1 degree Celcius

Now let us discuss an experiment to determine the specific heat capacity of a liquid.

Place a beaker on a digital weighing scale. After placing the beaker press the zero to make the balance zero.

Now add the liquid for which the specific heat capacity has to be figured out in to the beaker.Record the mass of the liquid.

Place a thermometer and an immersion heater into the liquid and read the temperature of the liquid.

Now it is required to wrap the beaker fully with any insulating material so that there would be no escape or transfer of heat to the surroundings.

Now connect a joule meter to the immersion heater. Make sure that the power supply is given properly to the joule meter and the immersion heater. The joule meter would give the reading of how much amount of energy is passed to the immersion heater when the power supply is on.

Leave the setup for almost 30 minutes so that you will be able to see the raise in temperature accurately on the thermometer.

Now the joule meter gives the amount of heat that has been passed in total into the immersion heater and the thermometer would give the final temperature of the oil.

Now we have all the information that is required to calculate the specific heat capacity of the liquid.

We know that the change in thermal energy can be given as the product of mass (m), specific heat capacity (C) and temperature change

i.e

Hence specific heat capacity is

where,

C is the specific heat capacity (J/ kg ).

m is the mass (kg)

is the temperature change ()

and is the change in thermal energy (J)

I hope this helps... Feel free to comment and discuss further... Cheers =)