Heat Capacity of a Metal Lab

Today we got to complete the metal lab! Because of time restraints, we could not do both copper and lead so we had to pick which one we wanted to try. Half of the class did copper and the other half did lead. My partner and I choose to do copper. During the experiment, we used a form of calorimetry to determine the specific heat of copper. By measuring the increase in temperature of the water in which we put the copper in, we calculated the specific heat of the metal. We set the energy gained to the negative energy lost to find the answer. The steps we followed today:

1. Places 100.mL of room temp. distilled water into a Styrofoam cup and recorded temp.
2. Find the mass of the test tube
3. Place metal in test tube about 1/3 of the way
4. Find the mass of the test tube with metal
5. Heat the metal up in a water bath to boiling. Let boil for 5 minutes then record the temperature of the water (the metal should be the same temp.)
6. Pour the metal into the water with the Styrofoam cup. Place probe in cup and stir 
7. Record the highest temperature reached by the water

Our Data:

• mass of test tube- 15.9355
• mass of test tube and metal- 54.9484
• initial temperature of metal- 100.1 oC
• initial temperature of H20- 23.4 oC
• final temperature of metal and H20- 27.5 oC

 Using this data we were able to find the specif heat of copper!

Overview or explanation of lab
How to calculate specific heat