Specific heat capacity of water

As part of the subject of heat and internal energy, the 8th graders first dealt with the determination of the specific heat capacity of water during physics lessons. To determine this, the students heated a measured amount of water with a heating coil and calculated the specific heat capacity from the temperature increase and heating energy. This calculation was made as the mean of the individual measurements.
As an alternative, the students determined the specific heat capacity from the graphical representation of the measured values ​​and corrected this value by taking into account the heat capacity of the calorimeter used.
In the lesson that followed, they conducted an experiment on the mixing temperature of various amounts of hot and cold water. The origin of the mixing temperature was first explained qualitatively and then an equation was set up for this in an additional task. The comparison between measured and calculated values ​​showed that the heat capacity of the calorimeter used, had to be taken into account here as well, since the measured mixture temperature was always lower than the calculated one.