Newton's Law Of Cooling

About the Newton’s Law of Cooling lab

You will want to get a copy of the lab handout for the lab either online or from me – read that first.

Here is the lab handout: Lab-NewtonsLawOfCooling.doc

 This lab is about how the rate of heat flow depends on the temperature of a beaker of hot water surrounded by ice water.  In our experiment, we had a 100 ml beaker in a larger metal pan full of ice and water.  I even had a little motor with a paddle stirring the water on the outside of the beaker.  We put a Vernier Temperature probe (calibrated to degrees Celsius) in the inner beaker of hot water, and set it to record the temperature every second.

 Newton’s law of cooling states that the heat should flow quickly out of a hot object when it is very hot relative to its surroundings, and slowly when its temperature is more near the surrounding temperature.  You will see this in the shape of the graph.

 Here is a data file you can use - Misc-NLC-Data.xls

Here are videos of what we did

Introduction:

3:57

Graph and calculations:

10:01

2:05

The Graph Paper we used: GraphPaper.2.doc - The graph works out pretty well in Portrait layout.

Here is the lab handout: Lab-NewtonsLawOfCooling.doc

You should turn in

• • A data table with the 5 points we find in the video.

  • A graph of at least those 5 points.  (You could just use Excel)

  • Your calculations of k

  • The answers to questions A, B, C, and D in your very own words.  Note that D is an IB evaluation of the experiment.  Be sure to cite reasons and data to justify your conclusion.