Wednesday, December 13, 2017

Coffee accident

This morning I walked into the library cafe and got my daily morning coffee. As I sat down, I slipped and the coffee spilled onto the table. I left the coffee there for a while, and then cleaned it up after. I started to ask myself how much heat energy was transferred from the coffee to the table for the coffee to lose so much heat.

The Coffee was approximately 71.5 C when I got it, and then fell to a room temperature of  23 C.

The mass of the Coffee Spilled was .10kg, and the specific heat for coffee and milk is 4.184 J/ (g C˚).

Using the equation :

Q= mc∆T

We can find that the transfer of heat energy is...

Q= (.10kg)( 4.184 J/ (g C˚))(48.5 C)

Q=20.3 J of energy is lost from the coffee to it's environment.


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