A Low-Cost method for Measuring the Specific Heat of Iron Nail Copper and Aluminium by Using Newton's Law of Cooling and Its Comparison

Abstract

The purpose of the research was to design the experiment of a low – cost method for measuring the specific heat capacity of solids iron, nail, copper, and aluminium by using the Newton’s Law of cooling. The advance of this research results was the measurement of the specific heat capacity of iron, nail, copper, and aluminium without the use of a calorimeter. The cooling curves of the systems container/water and container/water/sample were analyzed. We discussed an application of this method simplifying Newton’s Law of cooling. In spite of the use of only low-cost instruments, this application yields consistent results in determining the specific heat of iron, nail, copper, and aluminium. The research achieved its aims and the findings were as follows: 1) the experiment results found that, the rate of heat transfer proportional to the ambient temperature difference leading to an exponential decrease of temperature with time. This was Newton’s law of proportional cooling. 2) The results of the specific heat capacity by using law of energy conservation found that the specific heat capacity of the iron, nail, copper, and aluminium were about  446.20, 447.32, 388.57  and 895.93  respectively. The results were in good agreement with the standard specific heat capacity value for all solid samples 0.402%, 0.152%, 0.406% and 0.452% respectively. 3) The excellent comparison results with the standard specific heat capacity value and the previous research paper were also given. The results of the research said that the method could be used to determine the specific heat capacity of solids instead of using a calorimeter.