If a hot piece of metal (at 80 degrees Celsius) is placed in cold water (10 degrees Celsius), what can you say about the final temperature of the water/metal mixture? If you wanted a more accurate answer, what other information would you need?
I'm sure you know what will happen so I'll leave the first part to you. To be more quantitative, you need the following:
q(heat lost by metal) = mass metal x specific heat metal x (Tfinal-Tinitial).
q(heat gained by water) = mass H2O x specific heat water x (Tfinal-Tinitial).
You can go through the two equations and count up what other information you would need.
Oooooooooooh....thanks Dr. Bob cannot believe I missed that
To determine the final temperature of the water/metal mixture, we need to consider the principle of heat transfer, which states that heat will flow from the hotter object to the cooler one until they reach thermal equilibrium (the same temperature).
In this situation, the hot piece of metal will transfer heat to the cold water until they reach the same temperature. However, the final temperature will also depend on their respective masses, specific heat capacities, and thermal conductivities.
If we assume that there is no heat loss to the environment and the specific heat capacities and masses of the metal and water are known, we can use the principle of conservation of energy to calculate the final temperature. The equation used is:
(metal mass) x (metal specific heat capacity) x (change in metal temperature) = (water mass) x (water specific heat capacity) x (change in water temperature)
To obtain a more accurate answer, we would need the specific heat capacities and masses of both the metal and water. These values can be obtained from material properties tables or through experimental measurements. With this additional information, we can calculate the final temperature using the equation mentioned earlier.