Students were given five masses of an unknown metal. Your job is to determine the identity of the metal by analyzing the data that the students collected. Their experiment is described below.
First, they measured the mass and temperature of a sample of water in a calorimeter. Then, they heated the 100 g metal sample in a beaker filled with boiling water and waited until the metal sample reached 100°C. They transferred the metal sample into the calorimeter and placed the lid on the calorimeter. They stirred until the temperature no longer changed, and the water and metal reached equilibrium.
They repeated the procedure with a 200 g, 300 g, 400 g, and 500 g sample of the metal.
With the information above, as many questions as you can below.
1. What is the specific heat of the masses in this experiment? Infer the substance the masses are made of and explain your inference using the data as support. Based on your calculation of the metal's specific heat, what is the metal? Show your work.
2. List three sources of error the students may have encountered that would account for the differences between your values and the accepted value. Some of your focus should be on considering that heat transfer should only have taken place between the water and the unknown substance in the calorimeter.
3. Explain in your own words how a calorimeter works.
0 answers