Heating and Cooling in reactons

Happy Wednesday everyone!  This semester is steadily rolling along and I think everything is going quite well.  This week we will be talking about heating and cooling and specific heat capacity.

For Students:
We can't talk about specific heat capacity without first talking about the unit of energy, (remember heat is a form of energy), the joule.  The joule is name for James Joule:

Joule was the son of a wealthy brewer in Manchester, England.  The family wealth and the workshop in the brewery gave Joule the opportunity to pursue scientific studies.  Among the topics that he studied was the issue of whether heat was a massless fluid.  He eventually figured out exactly the nature of heat!
The calories in the food you eat are actually measured in Kilocalories, which is 1000 calories.  A calorie (not a kilocalorie) is equal to 4.184 joules.
When an object is heated or cooled, the quantity of energy transferred depends on three things:
1.  the quantity of the material
2.  the amount of temperature change
3.  the material itself
Specific heat capacity (c) is the energy transferred as heat that is required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of a substance by 1 kelvin.  The units are joules/g*k (joules per gram kelvin).   For solving these types of problems, first you need to find the change in temperature.  This is the final temperature - the initial temperature.  It is given in Kelvins.  Then you need the formula:
                                    q (heat) = C (specific heat) x m (mass) x change in temperature

We will be working on these this week!

For Parents:
I mentioned the field trip and it is coming!  We will be going to the Great Lakes Science Center in 3 weeks.  You should be seeing a permission slip home this Friday.  Your student must pack a bag lunch and can bring money for the gift shop if you'd like.  We will be leaving school at exactly 9 am and returning at 2 pm.
Great Lakes Science Center

Thanks again, and have a nice day!