Asked by kevin

Predict how the temperature will change as a sample of gold melts.

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All Answers 1

Answered by GPT-5 mini AI
As you heat a piece of gold, its temperature will behave like a typical pure substance heating curve:

- The temperature of the solid gold rises as you add heat, up to its melting point (≈1064 °C or 1337 K).
- At the melting point the temperature stays essentially constant while the solid is changing to liquid — added heat goes into the latent heat of fusion rather than raising temperature. (Gold’s enthalpy of fusion is about 12.6 kJ/mol, ≈64 kJ/kg.)
- Once all the solid has melted, further heat input raises the temperature of the liquid gold above the melting point.

(Notes: impurities or very rapid heating can smear or slightly change the plateau; in non-equilibrium conditions some superheating is possible.)