How the Temperature of Water Is Affected By the Time It Is Heated.

Authors Avatar
How the temperature of water is affected by the time it is heated.

I am going to investigate the how an amount of a substance is affected by a heater made from glass and copper wire.

There are many variables I need to consider.

* The voltage and current - the higher the voltage and current running into the heater means that there will be more energy in. This means that there will be more energy out and so the water will get more energy from the heater in a smaller space of time. This means that the water will heat up quicker. The heating is reversed if there is less voltage.

* The length of wire and number of coils - The longer the copper wire means that the number of coils around the glass will increase. This means that there will be more resistance and so more energy will be lost into the substance whilst it is passing through the wire. This means that there will be more energy put into the substance and it will heat up faster.

* The amount of time - When the heater is in the substance, energy comes from the power pack, through the resister (the heater) and into the substance to be heated. It is this energy that heats up the substance. The longer the heater is left in the water means that more energy can pass through the heater and into the substance and so making it hotter.

* The amount of substance to be heated - The more substance to be heated needs more energy to heat it because there are more particles in the substance. So the more substance I have means that it will take longer to heat up, if I have less substance then it will not take as long.

* The substance I heat - different liquids have different specific heat capacities. Specific heat capacity (as found in my "Key Science - Physics" textbook) is the energy needed to raise the temperature of 1kg of material by 1?C. Specific heat capacity is always a constant for the substance but because different substances have different consistencies and structure then they have different specific heat capacities and so will need more or less energy to heat them up.

I am going to investigate the time that the heater is left in a substance affects the temperature of it. I am going to use 100cm3 of water because it is easy to obtain and I know that the specific heat capacity is 4.2 J/g. I am going to see how the time affects the temperature because I think that it is the simplest experiment to do and easiest to compare results. It can also be easily done in a school classroom, as it does not need any specialist equipment that the school doesn't have.

Method

I am going to make a heater using a glass rod and copper wire. I will coil the copper wire around the glass rod and thus make a heater when I flow electricity through the wire. (As shown below)

I will then set up a circuit, containing a power pack (to power my heater) an ammeter (so I can record the current), a voltmeter (to record the volts) and my heater.
Join now!


I will place my heater in a 100cm3 beaker of water for different amounts of time and see what the temperature of the water is after each time. I will take the temperature every 2 minutes from 0 to 20 minutes, always leaving the heater in the water. Altogether I will get 11 temperatures. I will then repeat the whole experiment two more times, this will increase the accuracy and mean that I will have more chance of getting reliable results. At the end of my 3 experiments I will have 33 temperatures and I will then work ...

This is a preview of the whole essay