If 200 grams of water is to be heated from 24°C to 100°C to make a cup of tea, how much heat must be added?

The specific heat of water is 4.18 JJ//g*CgC.

1 Answer
Dec 23, 2015

q = "64 kJ"q=64 kJ

Explanation:

As you know, a substance's specific heat tells you how much heat is required to increase the temperature of "1 g"1 g of that sample by 1^@"C"1C.

In water's case, you know that its specific heat is equal to 4.18"J"/("g" ""^@"C")4.18JgC. This tells you that in order to increase the temperature of "1 g"1 g of water by 1^@"C"1C, you need to supply "4.18 J"4.18 J of heat.

How much heat would you need to increase the temperature of "200 g"200 g of water by 1^@"C"1C?

Well, if you need "4.18 J"4.18 J per gram to increase its temperature by 1^@"C"1C, it follows that you will need 200200 times more heat to get this done.

Likewise, if you were to increase the temperature of "1 g"1 g of water by 76^@"C"76C, you'd need 7676 times more heat than when increasing the temperature of "1 g"1 g by 1^@"C"1C.

Combine these two requirements and you get the total amount of heat required to increase the temperature of "200 g"200 g of water by 76^@"C"76C.

Mathematically, this is expressed using the following equation

color(blue)(q = m * c * DeltaT)" ", where

q - heat absorbed/lost
m - the mass of the sample
c - the specific heat of the substance
DeltaT - the change in temperature, defined as final temperature minus initial temperature

Plug in your values to get

q = 200 color(red)(cancel(color(black)("g"))) * 4.18"J"/(color(red)(cancel(color(black)("g"))) color(red)(cancel(color(black)(""^@"C")))) * (100 - 24)color(red)(cancel(color(black)(""^@"C")))

q = "63536 J"

I'll leave the answer rounded to two sig figs and expressed in kilojoules

q = color(green)("64 kJ")