Let's calculate the specific heat of aluminum

Calculate the specific heat of aluminum from your experimental data. Compare it with the correct result found in the tables. Analyze possible mistakes made during the experiment.

From the results of our experiment and the calculations from the previous worksheet, we learned that

Water gained (

J

)

How to calculate

From our test results and the calculations from the previous worksheet, we know how much energy the cold water of the calorimeter received from the test object. We take into account the law of conservation of energy, which says that as much as the cold water gained energy, the test object had to give up energy as well. Knowing how much energy the water gained, we also know how much energy the test object gave away: exactly the same amount.

If we write the formula for calculating the amount of heat for the test object

Q = c m_{k} Δ t^{\circ}

then we see that we know all the quantities in the formula except the specific heat. We can also write this formula in the form

c = \frac{Q}{m_{k} Δ t^{\circ}} = \frac{Q}{m_{k} (t^{\circ} - t_{k1})}

If we enter the test data here, we get the specific heat of the material of the test object, i.e. aluminum.

Test object mass $m_{k}$ ( $k g$ )
Initial temperature of the test object (hot water temperature) $t_{k 1}$ ( $^{\circ} C$ )
The final temperature of the cold water and the test object $t^{\circ}$ ( $^{\circ} C$ )

Let's calculate

Specific heat of aluminum from my experiment ( $\frac{J}{k g \cdot^{\circ} C}$ )
Specific heat of aluminum from the table ( $\frac{J}{k g \cdot^{\circ} C}$ )

The table shows the specific heats of several well-known substances.

Comment

All sources of error mentioned in the question are real, although they affect the result to varying degrees.

The bottommost, unexplained row of the results table gives the automatically calculated value based on the test results.