SPECIFIC HEAT CAPACITY OF WATER LAB REPORT
DESIGN
Research Question: What is the specific heat capacity of tab water?
Aim: The aim of this experiment is to find the specific heat capacity of tab water. For doing this, the temperature changes will be measured during certain periods of time.
Variables
Independent Variable: Specific Heat Capacity of Water
Dependent Variable: Change in Temperature
Background Information
Specific heat capacity is defined as "the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of 1kg of material by 1ðC." (Hamper, p.72). This amount of energy depends on the substance; every substance has different heat capacity. For instance, the specific heat capacity of iron is different than water. For finding the specific heat capacity of a substance, generally calorimeter is used. Basically, the substance is put into the calorimeter. The substance is heated with electrical heater. The temperature of the substance is measured gradually. In a certain amount of time, the results are recorded and the specific heat capacity is calculated according to the following equation;
where Q: amount of energy, m: mass, c: specific heat capacity, âÂÂT: change in temperature.
Hypothesis
The specific heat capacity of water is 4.186 joule/gram ðC (Nave, 2012). This value is valid for pure water, but in this experiment tap water will be used instead of fresh water. Since tap water contains impurities, the specific heat capacity is expected to be higher than the theoretical value.
Procedure
Apparatus
Electrical Heater (1000 W) Stopwatch
Thermometer
Tap water
In this experiment, the specific heat capacity of water is being calculated by using a heater. For doing this, the temperature changes of water during 30 seconds, 1 minute, 1 and a half minute, 2 minutes were measured.
0.5 liters of tap water was measured and poured into the heater. While measuring the...