Thermal Engineering Design Project: A Calorimeter That Measures the Specific Heat of Aluminum – Part 2

Abstract

A thermal engineering design project requiring the design, construction, and operation of a calorimeter that measures the specific heat of aluminum was assigned to a class of third-year mechanical engineering students. In a previous IJMEE paper, the same project was described, along with the author's electrically heated calorimeter that was constructed before the assignment was made. In the current paper, a completely different calorimeter design is described. The current calorimeter is a hollow aluminum cylinder fitted with a plug forming a watertight cavity. The cylinder is heated and allowed to cool in still air. Two tests were performed: one with water in the cavity and one without water in the cavity. The different cooling rates from the two tests allowed computation of the aluminum's specific heat. A class of junior (third-year) mechanical engineering students, working in teams, produced designs using electrically heated aluminum samples and calorimeters that mixed aluminum and water at initially different temperatures. The 16 student groups plus the author produced 113 data points with a mean specific heat value that deviated by 7.8% from a published value.