Designing a Calorimeter and Determining Ccal to Find Changes in Enthalpy and Heat of a Reaction with Different Concentrations and Volumes
Abstract
The purpose of this lab was to investigate the heat energy changes that occur during an acid-base reaction and relate it to enthalpy of reaction by first creating two different structured calorimeters and finding their specific heat capacities. After finding the specific heat capacities of the calorimeters, the acid-base reaction was conducted with two different volumes to determine the variables’ effect on the enthalpy of the reaction and the heat of the reaction. Due to time constraints in the lab, the concentration variable was not tested for the acid base reaction to determine its effect, but was researched to find out what would have happened, if it was performed(2). Finding the net ionic equation of the acid base reaction of determined that it would produce 1 mol of H2O which gave the prediction of -55.9 kJ/mol as the literature value for enthalpy of the reaction. The results were compared for enthalpy of the reaction for the two volumes tested and also compared to the literature value to determine accuracy. The results from the reaction gave -57% to -64% error. This led to the conclusion that there were many possible sources of human error and other error, which shows how these types of Calorimeters are made of poor quality materials to determine an accurate measurement of heat of the reaction and enthalpy of the reaction.
Introduction
The main objective of this lab was to determine the specific heat capacities of the calorimeters designed and use this information to find the heat of the neutralization reaction that was given at different variables of concentration and volume. In order to determine the heat of the reaction it is necessary to determine the specific heat capacities of the calorimeters.
Although the heat of reaction obtained in this experiment is performed in a small laboratory...