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Mechanical Work of Heat Lab Report Essay

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Physics 2426 Date 9/19/2011 Experiment: Electrical Method Mechanical Equivalent of heat
Group No 2
Objectives
The objective of this experiment is to determine experimentally where the heat comes from and how is it created; also to understand what the relationship between mechanical energy, electrical power and joule heating coming from a resistor submerged in water. Furthermore comprehend how to use an electric circuit depending on the use of an ammeter or a voltmeter using a parallel and a series circuit respectively. By the termination of this experiment we will be comfortable working with basic circuits.
Concepts
Historically the mechanical conversion of heat has been a concept with a great importance in the …show more content…

We took the calorimeter cup and we weight it, we filled the cup with 2/3 of water cooled down with teaspoon ice around 10C measured with a thermometer. We then proceed to weight the cup with the 2/3 of water to determine the mass of the water by substracting the mass of the cup from the mass of the cup with water ( Mw = Mcw – Mc ) Mw= 322.2g Mcw= 334.5g Mc 12.3g. We then calculated the heat capacity using the equation C=Mw * cw . As we know we used a styrofoam cup, therefore we can neglect its heat capacity and take the heat capacity as C= 322.20 Cal/C. Then we turned on the power supply and crank up the power knob until the product of the voltage and until the readings were about 30Wand the voltmeter indicates about 10V we then started the stopwatch. We recorded the temperature from the room and it was 25 degrees Celsius and then we waited (1071.88 seconds) for the water on the cup which is 10 C reached 35 C which is 10C above room temperature with an uncertainty value of 5C. We waited and we determined that the electrical power of the experiment was 36.2 W determined by the voltage which was 10.0V and the current that was 3.62 AMPS ( P = IV ). After

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