Ice Calorimetry Lab

Highlights of the activity

1. This integrated laboratory activity is designed to help upper-division undergraduate students understand heat, heat capacity and entropy.
2. Students use a water proof resistor to heat ice water while measuring the temperature.
3. In the lab write-up, students analyze their data to find heat capacity, latent heat, and changes in entropy.

Reasons to spend class time on the activity

This lab gives students a chance to take data on the first day of class (or later, but I prefer to do it the first day of class). It provides an immediate context for thermodynamics, and also gives them a chance to experimentally measure a change in entropy… although I do the class before teaching them anything about entropy except how to find it by integrating dQ/T.

Reflections

• Reflections from the original implementation.

• Reflections from "official" adapters/adopters.

• Reflections from the general public.

Instructor's Guide

• Wiki version

Student Handouts

eeicehand.pdf

eeicehand.tex