Question

The following experiment is performed to calculate the specific heat of a certain metal. A 500 gram container made of the metal contains 600 grams of at at a) water. Both are initially at 25.0 'C. Now a 200 gram piece of the metal 90.0 'C is placed in the water. The entire system comes to equilibrium 30.9 "C. specific heat of water = cwate=r 1.0Ocal/(gm "C)

a)Assuming no heat loss to the surroundings, calculate the specific heat of the metal. (15 points)

b) In an actual experiment there will be some heat loss to the surroundings and the answer calculated above will not be correct because the isolation of the system assumed in those calculations will not be true. Suppose the experiment is performed as above (with 30.9 "C as the final temperature) but we know that some heat ener5/ has escaped from the system to the surroundings. Will the correct value of the specific heat of the metal be larger or smaller than the answer asked for in part a)? Why

Answer 1