Science heat capacity question i think?

[NicholasM19]

When 100 g of snow is melted in 1.0 L of water, the change in water's temperature, expressed in scienctific notation.
have an exam tommorow and this will help me study thanks

[stephen_lee]

Hi NicholasM19,

So first, you need to have some information about snow (essentially just ice) and water.
specific heat of water: 4.18 J/G*K
density of water: 1g/mL
heat of fusion of water: 334J/g
I'm not sure if you need to have these numbers memorized, but you need to use these numbers to solve the problem.

the equations that you will need to know are:
q=mC(deltaT)
q=mHf
where q is the energy change in joules, m is the mass, C is specific heat, Hf is heat of fusion, and deltaT is the change in temperature.


So the first step is to find the amount of energy released by the snow melting.
100g of snow is being melted so the energy released can be described using the equation q=mHf
q=mHf
q=(100g)(334J/g)
q=33,400J

So this means that the snow has to absorb 33,400J of energy from its environment, which would be water in this case.

Now you need to solve for the temperature change in water.
First, solve for the mass of water to use the equation q=mC(deltaT). You know that the density of water is 1g/mL so with a little dimensional analysis you get:
(1L water)(1000mL water/1L water)(1g water/1mL water)=1000g water

So using the information that we have calculated, we now know that for the equation q=mC(deltaT), q=33,400J (calculated from the snow), m is 1000g (calculated from the density of water), and C=4.18 J/G*K. This means that the only variable that we don't know is deltaT and that we can now solve for the change in the water's temperature.
q=mC(deltaT)
33,400J=(1000g)(4.18J/G*K)(deltaT)
deltaT=7.99K

This means that the temperature of the water changed by 7.99K which is equal to 7.99 degrees Celsius. Express in scientific notation is 7.99X10^0 degrees Celsius.

I hope this helps with your test and good luck!
Stephen Lee