Bomb Calorimeters

The purpose of this lab was to find the most efficient way to transfer heat from a chip to a water beaker. The heat transfer was coming from burning a baked lay and through our calorimeter heat energy was pushed out. Then we took it another step further by modifying our calorimeter to capture even more energy. The overall purpose was to capture as much energy as possible.

“Energy is the ability to do work, or the ability to elicit change in matter.” (Castro) Energy can be defined in different ways as well. Kinetic energy is energy that results from movement. (Castro) An example would be water flowing through a hydro dam. (What is…) Potential energy is energy that is present due to an objects position or configuration. (Castro) An example of potential energy is a bow that …show more content…
The most common is a Styrofoam cup. And a more complicated one is called a bomb calorimeter which has the substance in the middle surrounded by water, and the substance is ignited and the change in temperature of the water is measured. (Cal …) The measurements as well as the mass and the specific heat, “which is the amount of heat required to raise an objects temperature by one degree Celsius” (Chem …), are used in the calorimetery equation. Which is specific heat multiplied by the mass in grams multiplied by the change in temperature. (Cal …)
The overall goal was to capture the energy of a chip. As a class on average we saw that there was an increase in energy capture with a .77 percent increase from the baseline to the trial with the calorimeter. Then a decrease of .1 percent with the modifications added to the calorimeter. Our individual group however saw an increase of 1.96 percent from the baseline to trial one. There was a 5.08 percent increase from trial one to trial two. So the class as a whole did not have percent captured but our group