Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

I am working on my investigation plan an I need to compare my results to somthing. I need a control. My project is comparing the accuracy and precision of a homemade calorimeter versus a lab calorimeter. I use the equation q=mCsp(delta)t. I'm using metals copper and aluminum and I have the Csp and I will ise the same mass for each calorimeter. All I need is somthing to compare my results with

Hi sharpie18.

Are you investigating whether a homemade calorimeter is just as accurate as a lab calorimeter? If so, then your control (baseline) would be the lab calorimeter. You will compare your homemade calorimeter results to your lab colorimeter results. Using some standard (you will need to define this before your experiment), you can then determine whether the homemade calorimeter is just as good as (or better) than the lab colorimeter.

Hope this helps...good luck!

Thanks for the reply! I never thought of using the lab calorimeter as the object to compare to since theoretically you should get the same results every time.