Question

1.What is the specific heat of the masses in this experiment? Infer the substance the masses are made of and explain your inference using your data as support. Based on your calculation of the metal's specific heat, what is the metal? Show your work.
Answer:Observations Trial 1 Trial 2 Trial 3 Trial 4 Trial 5
Mass used (g) 100 200 300 400 500
Beginning temperature of water
in calorimeter (°C)20.2 20.8 20.4 19.8 19.2
Ending temperature of the water in the calorimeter after equilibrium has been reached, measured (°C) 28.5 35.7 41.1 45.4 49.0

Answer 1

I could really use some help with this question. I have tried multiple times and have done research on it.

Answer 2

It appears that you haven't shared all the relevant information with us. e.g. the mass of the water in the cup for each trial and the initial temperature of the metal sample (room temperature perhaps?)

Answer 3

It did not give the mass of the water, but there is around 187 milliliters of water. Also, it did not give the initial temperature of the metal used. @LifeEngineer

Answer 4

@IrishBoy123 If you are free and willing, your help would be most appreciated. Sorry, I know you helped me yesterday, I just have these labs where I only need help with one question on each.

Answer 5

Well lets start with we know and work our way up.

The relevant equation to find specific heat would be Q=m*c*deltaT

We can find the heat transfer (Q) for each trial because we know the volume of the water (water's density is relatively constant in the liquid state so volume times density (1kg/l or 1000kg/m^3)), the specific heat of water (4200 J/(kgK) ) and the initial and final temperature.

A calorimeter is being used, so you can assume that heat transfer to the environment is negligible. As such, heat transfer to the water equals the heat transfer from the metal. So now you have Q for the metal, and you know the mass of the metal for each trial. We also know that because the system is in equilibrium in its end state, the final temperature of the metal equals the final temperature of the water. But unfortunately, since the metal is unknown, we don't know its heat capacity. And if we also don't know the initial temperature, we have too many variables to solve. If you assume that the initial temperature of the metal is the same in each trial, then you could create a system of equations and solve. But you need to know at least one more thing like that about the problem to solve it

Answer 6

Thanks for the response @LifeEngineer ! I really appreciate the help. I am not sure what to do since the initial temperature of the metal is not known. Let me look again and if it is not there I will ask me teacher what he thinks . I know students would usually go to their teacher for help, but I go to an online school so it is a little tougher to do that. Hopefully, we can figure this out.

Answer 7

Alternately, I think it would be fair to assume (for the sake of solving the problem) that the metal starts at the same temperature each time as this is a laboratory experiment. Generally its good practice to only change one independent variable at a time, and since we know that the mass of the metal is changing, we could set the initial temperature to be a constant unknown value. If that's the case, you can solve with a system of equations using a few of the trials (you'll need one equation/trial per unknown value)

Answer 8

Thanks again @LifeEngineer .. Do you mind to give me an example of how to do what you just said? Sorry, this is not my best subject.