Heat capacity of metals

Principle

Heated specimens are placed in a calorimeter filled with water at low temperature. The heat capacity of the specimen is determined from the rise in the temperature of the water.

Benefits

• Compact, easily transportable setup
• For both demonstration and student experiments

Tasks

1. To determine the heat capacity of the calorimeter by filling it with hot water and determining the rise in temperature.
2. To determine the specific heat capacity of aluminium, iron and brass.
3. To verify Dulong Petit's law with the results of these experiments.

Learning objectives

• Mixture temperature
• Boiling point
• Dulong Petit's law
• Lattice vibration
• Internal energy
• Debye temperature