Michael Elmer

Physics Honors – 2
Partner: Michael Vaughan

Heating Curve of Water Lab

Purpose
To determine the heating curve of water by boiling ice that has been frozen in a test
tube.

Materials
• Hot Plate • Link cord
• 400 mL beaker • DIN adapter
• CBL • Power supply
• Calculator w/PHYSICS or CHEMBIO • Temperature probe frozen in
programs test tube

Procedure
1. Assemble all your equipment. The probe should be the last thing you get.

2. Plug the probe into Channel 1, turn on the CBL, and enter PHYSICS program.

3. SET UP PROBES-ONE-TEMPERATURE-USE STORED CALIBRATION.

4. COLLECT DATA-TIME GRAPH-10 seconds between samples-90 samples-USE

TIME SETUP.

5. LIVE DISPLAY.

6. Ymin=-10 Ymax=100 Yscl=5

7. Place beaker on hotplate. Turn hotplate to high. Start collecting data.

8. BE VERY CAREFUL NOT TO LET THE PROBE CORD YOUCH THE HOTPLATE!

Apparatus
Michael Elmer
Physics Honors – 2
Partner: Michael Vaughan

Precautions
Make sure that all non-members of your lab group are kept as far away from the lab
as possible, as they will interfere with your ability to concentrate on the lab and
they may cause an accident in your lab station. Likewise, make sure that you
remain in your lab area. Although it is dreadfully boring to sit and watch ice melt for
twenty minutes, you should remain diligent and make sure that everything is
proceeding as it should.

Data
[See Attached Graph]

Analysis
1. [See Attached Graph]

2. [See Attached Graph]

3. The portion of the graph where the ice is being heated has the highest slope
for the domain. This fits because the specific heat capacity of ice is much less
than that of water.

4. The period where there is no increase in the temperature of the water is

because the ice is melting. Although heat energy is constantly being added,
this energy is used to change the state of the substance from a solid to a
liquid, instead of changing its temperature.

Error Analysis
If the temperature probe comes into contact with a patch of water that is warmer or
colder than average, there will be an odd curve in the graph. This may possibly
have happened during my lab after the ice melted.

Conclusions
The heating curve of water looks somewhat like my graph that was made from the
data. I learned that the flat part of the graph is where water changes state. Also
learned that the slope of the graph when the substance had its temperature raised
was related to the specific heat capacity of the substance.