A 44.0 g sample of an unknown metal at 99.0 oC was placed in a constant-pressure calorimeter of negligible heat capacity contain
ing 80.0 mL water at 24.0 oC. The final temperature of the system was found to be 28.4 oC. Calculate the Specific heat of the metal if density of water is 1.00 g/ml.
In this case, since this is a system in which the water is heated up and the metal is cooled down in a calorimeter which is not affected by the heat lose-gain process, we can infer that the heat lost by the metal is gained be water, it means that we can write:
Thus, in terms of masses, specific heats and temperatures we can write:
Whereas the equilibrium temperature is the given final temperature of 28.4 °C and we can compute the specific heat of the metal as shown below:
Plugging the values in and since the density of water is 1.00 g/mL so the mass is 80.0g, we obtain:
Percent error can be calculated by the difference of the theoretical value and the measured value divided by the theoretical value multiplied by 100 percent.