Question

A group of students decides to set up an experiment in which they will measure the specific heat of a small amount of metal. The metal has a mass of about 5g. They hang the metal in a beaker of boiling water for a long time (10 minutes or so). Then, they very quickly (within a few seconds) remove the metal from the boiling water and transfer it to a styrofoam cup of 150m Lof water at room temperature. There is a thermometer in the styrofoam cup. They know that the rise in temperature will tell them what they need to know in order to determine the specific heat of the metal, so they watch the thermometer closely ... but nothing happens. The temperature does not appear to change at all. Each student has a different suggestion for how to improve the experiment. Which of the following suggestions is least likely to help? Use less room-temperature water in the styrofoam cup. Use more metal (50 grams instead of 5 grams). Use more boiling water in the first beaker. Use a more sensitive thermometer.

Answer 1

Using more boiling water is LEAST likely to help

Step-by-step explanation:

Using less room-temp. water in the styro cup (as long as the piece of metal is fully immersed) is helpful because less volume of water would heat up quicker and the ΔT would be greater.

Using more metal is helpful because more heat will transfer to the water and make it easier to measure the temperature increase.

Using more boiling water will not make the metal piece get any higher than the boiling point of water, so this is not helpful, plus it would take longer to boil a greater volume water, thus slowing down the experiment.

A more sensitive thermometer is helpful because it would improve the precision of the measurements.