Specific Heat Capacity of Tap Water

7/22/2019 Specific Heat Capacity of Tap Water

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Experimental Setup:

Before start to the experiment, area of experiment, equipments and safety should be

controlled.

List of Equipment:

Kettle ( liter capacity, 1000 W rating) Thermometer Stopwatch Tap water ( kg)To get more reliable results, the experiment should be repeated at least 4 times (or more.)

For each experiment, make sure that all items are ready.

Procedure to Follow:

Firstly, prepare the apparatus needed during the experiment. Fill the kettle with water. Make sure that it is kg. Then, measure the temperature of water before heating it, and record. Monitor time by using stopwatch. Make sure that the water does not boil to prevent

evaporating.

After some time, measure the temperature of hot water and record it again. Repeat these procedures for 4 times and for the each repetition, determine a different

time.

Decide a temperature and heat water until it reaches this target. Measure the timespassed. (to get more reliable result.)

Last, use your recorded data to calculate the specific heat capacity.


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The specific heat capacity of tap water found in this experiment is:

1000 W= energy/60s

Energy = 60 000 J

60 000 J = kg x c x 24oC

c = 5000 J/kg oC

Third Experiment:

Time: 0 second 75t second

Temp: 13 oC 47 oC

75s

34oC


1000 W= energy/75s


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Energy = 75 000 J

75 000 J = kg x c x 34oC

C = 4411 J/kg oC (approximately)

Fourth Experiment:

Time: 0 second 90t second

Temp: 19o

C 56o

C

90s

37oC


1000 W= energy/90s

Energy = 90 000 J

90 000 J = kg x c x 37oC

c = 4864 J/kg oC (approximately)


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According to these experiments, average specific heat capacity of tap water found is:

4831 J/kgoC.

Conclusion and Evaluation:

As a conclusion, we see the result is different from the specific heat capacity of pure

water. Because tap water is not pure and it contains some other additives, its specific heat

capacity is different. During the experiment, volume of water should be kept constant to get

more reliable result because in this experiment time is our changeable factor. So change in

volume of water would cause unreliable results. The other important thing is using kettle

instead of Bunsen burner. If we used Bunsen burner, then the experiment would not be done

fairly because we cannot provide the same conditionals for each repetition. Also, we make

sure that thermometer just touches to water molecules because to get just water temperature,

thermometer should be used very carefully. In other ways, thermometer will give us different

results. To get more reliable result, this experiment can be re-done but by changing constant

and independent values such as volume of water and time.

In this experiment, average specific heat capacity of tap water is 4831 J/kgoCbut by

eliminating human errors and using more precise measuring techniques, we will be able to get

more accurate and more consistent readings.

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Specific Heat Capacity of Tap Water