Previous posts:
My favorite web applications - Part 1
My favorite web applications - Part 2
My favorite web applications - Part 3
My favorite web applications - Part 4
My favorite web applications - Part 5
Continuing on with my pet project here, this next web application is actually another one of those that closely mimics an actual experiment. This time, it is on specific heat, and the goal here is to measure the specific heat of an unknown liquid. You do this by measuring the mass and temperature of the unknown liquid, and then mixing it with hot water of known mass and temperate. By finding the final equilibrium temperature, you then calculate the specific heat of the unknown liquid.
Like I said, this web experiment is done step by step just like a real experiment. In fact, you could use this as the lab instruction and get the students to follow each step of the experiment. But what I like the most is that each student will be given a different set of numbers to work with. The masses will be different, and so will the starting temperatures of the liquid, resulting in different final temperature as well. I don't remember if the specific heat of the unknown liquid is also different for different students. Please let me know if you've used this app or if you discover this later on.
I used this as one of my virtual labs when we went remote. But I continue to use this after we gone back to face-to-face classes as part of my in-class problem solving exercises. I've also given this as a take-home homework problem, and they have to show the final acknowledgement page that they got this correct if they want to receive credit for it. If the students have done the actual experiment itself, this web application will be quite familiar and they should have a good clue on how to correctly find the unknown specific heat.
Zz.
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