ShmoopTube

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And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by specific heat. [Fire rising]

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If it’s too specific, all of those adjectives can get pretty annoying…

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Alright, here's the question.

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In the lab, Bubba is trying to determine the identity of a metal by its specific heat. [Bubba wearing a lab coat]

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Here is the data he collected.

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What is the specific heat of the metal, given that the specific heat of water is ~4 J/g?celcius.

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And here are your potential answers.

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Hey, maybe if we help Bubba figure out his problem, he’ll give us some free shrimp. [Bubba at the shrimp store]

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Nothing motivates like seafood.

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All right, let’s take a look at the data that Bubba collected.

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It appears that he placed a hotter piece of metal in cooler water, then measured the temperature

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of the metal-water mixture. [Bubba with a piece of metal in hot water]

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How can we determine the specific heat of the metal with this data?

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Well, specific heat, or Cp, refers to the amount of heat required

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to raise the temperature of 1 gram of a substance by 1°C.

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In order to find the specific heat of the metal, we need to know how much heat was transferred [Piece of metal in a bed of water]

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from the metal to the water.

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We were given the specific heat of the water, the mass of the water, and the temperature

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change of the water, so we can calculate the heat that the water must have absorbed using

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the equation heat equals mass times the heat capacity times the change in

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temperature.

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Due to the law of conservation of energy, we can assume that the same amount of energy

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is released by the metal.

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Using the same equation, we can calculate our unknown Cp. [Equation for calculating Cp]

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All right, now it’s time for our favorite part, doing the math!

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Do the math do the math do the maaaath, do the math do the math do the maaaath…

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Alright we're done. Choice B is the one we want.

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And now, it's time for seafood. [Bubba sat at a table waiting for his order of seafood]

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Okay, Bubba, so that’ll be two orders of popcorn shrimp, a shrimp cocktail – anybody

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want some garlic bread?

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