Determining Heat Capacity of a Metal Cylinder

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Data
Results
Analysis
Conclusions
Reference

Introduction

Thermodynamic laws allow us to look deeper into the processes taking place to understand their nature, the driving forces, and the effects that accompany a reaction. One such thermodynamic concept is the phenomenon of specific heat Q. Specific heat, in the strict sense, should be understood as that amount of heat that must be transferred to a body of 1 kg mass in order to heat it by 1 degree (WSS, 2018). As this definition implies, there is a unique value of specific heat for each substance, which can be calculated using the formula c = Q/(m∆T). This paper explores the possibility of a calorimetric method to determine the specific heat for a metal cylinder.

Data

In the present work, the primary data collected during the experiment were the masses for the metal cylinder and the calorimeter directly. Table 1 shows the results of the primary measurements: this contains information about both masses and temperature values in the calorimeter apparatus. Note that the value of the specific heat capacity of the metal cylinder in this table is a reference, that is, it is known in advance. Since the purpose of this experiment was to determine the specific heat capacity of the cylinder, the tabulated value will be used to compare and determine the reliability of the results.

Table 1: Results of direct measurements

m_calorimeter	0.065 kg
C_calorimeter	900 JK^-1kg^-1
T_{initial calorimeter}	22.5 °C = 295.65 K

m_solid	0.0679 kg
C_{solid reference}	925.723 JK^-1kg^-1
T_{initial solid}	72.2 °C = 345.35 K

m_water	0.1927 kg
C_water	4,179 JK^-1kg^-1
T_{initial water}	22.5 °C = 295.65 K

T_final	25.9 °C = 299.05 K

Results

In this experiment, the calorimetric method is used to determine the specific heat capacity of a metal object. In this case, the following formulas are used:

The last formula can be slightly extended:

Since all the data are known, the values can be inserted into the formula above:

Analysis

Thus, based on the calculations, it was obtained that the specific heat capacity for the solid cylinder was 934.20 JK^-1kg^-1. This value can be compared with the reference value in order to determine the percentage of error. In particular,

From this it follows that the percentage of error was less than 1%, indicating extremely high accuracy and reliability of the experiment.

Conclusions

This paper used the calorimetric method to determine the specific heat capacity of a metal cylinder. The specific heat capacity is the unique value of heat energy that 1 kg of a body needs to transfer in order to heat it by one degree. Experiments have determined that the value of the specific heat capacity is 934.20 JK^-1kg^-1. In comparison, this value is about four times less than for liquid water — which means that heating a metal cylinder heats up much more rapidly than water, which confirms expectations. In addition, the obtained value was compared with the reference value, and the error percentage was only 0.92%. This indicates an extremely high accuracy of the experiment performed.

Reference

WSS. (2018). Specific heat capacity and water. USGS. Web.

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Determining Heat Capacity of a Metal Cylinder

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