Objective: The goal of the experiment that we performed was to prove the theoretical fact that water has a higher specific heat than oil.

Outline: For our experiment, we used a hot plate, 2 Lego Mindstorm Temperature Sensors, a computer, 2 beakers, organic oil, and tap water. Each beaker we filled with exactly the same amount of water and oil (80mL). The beakers were put on the hot plate and heated. Afterwards, we took the beakers off the hot plate and stuck the temperature sensors into them to continuously record the data (temperature of the substance inside of each beaker).

The data we obtained is summarized by the two graphs provided below:

Analysis: The curves graphed above support our thesis that water has a higher specific heat than oil. Not only during its time on the hot plate the water heated to a lower temperature, but also the decrease in the temperature of the water, once we took the beakers off the hot plate, was much lower than it was for the oil. Given that the heat provided to each beaker by the hot plate was the same and the masses of the water and oil were roughly equal, the fact that the increase in the temperature of water was lower than that of the oil is a clear demonstration of the fact that water has a higher specific heat. Calculating the heat emitted by the water and that emitted by the oil, we find that the water emitted 2681 Joules and the oil emitted 2645 Joules. Even though the water had lower initial temperature than the oil, the amount of heat the two liquids emitted was roughly the same. This fact illuminates one unique characteristic of water, which is that it takes a lot more heat to increase temperature of water than of any other liquid. The rule works vice versa, which means that water emits higher amount of energy when it cools down than other liquids (the application of this rule we saw in our experiment).

Conclusion: Water plays a crucial role in the temperature balance of the global climate. With its highest among all known liquids specific heat, water takes a longer time both to heat up and to cool down. This important feature allows our planet’s oceans to cool down slower than the land. Also due to its high specific heat, water has a considerable number of commercial applications, one of which is cooling nuclear reactors.