PHYS112 Lecture : Calorimetry Lab
19 Sep 2014
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Document Summary
A calorimeter is a device that can measure the heat absorbed or released by a reaction (petrucci, 2011). A calorimeter is thermally insulated from its surroundings, so that no heat from the reaction is lost to them; this means it is an isolated system (petrucci, 2011). There are two main types of calorimeters: a bomb calorimeter, and a coffee cup calorimeter. In this experiment a coffee cup calorimeter was used. This is a simple calorimeter in which the reactants are mixed in a double styrofoam cup. Styrofoam is such a good insulator, very little heat escapes from the system into the surroundings. So we treat the coffee cup calorimeter as an isolated system (book). The flow of heat is calculated using this equation: q=mc t (petrucci, 2011). In this equation q is the heat transferred, c is the specific heat capacity, m is the mass, and t is temperature (petrucci, 2011).
