Teaching specific heat using learning by laboratory activity

This paper is proposed to the simple experimental setup for finding the specific heat of unknown objects without the use of a calorimeter by using the Newton’s law of cooling and to help students understand in specific heat topic has been proposed. The experiment was developed as a teaching tool for specific heat topic, in order to build unknown objects experiments to use at the first–year undergraduate student with enroll in general physics course. The specific heat of an unknowns using cola can, zinc coffee can and glass marble as the measuring equipment. The specific heat of a substance can be measured by using a container filled with water (the system) and submerging a sample of the unknown to be investigated. The cooling curves of the system container/water and container/water/sample can be used to determine the specific heat of unknown objects. Moreover, 46 first–year undergraduate students with enrolled in general physics course, Suan Dusit University were taught using this experimental set. The teaching divided into 3 stages, the pre–test session, the activity by using laboratory–based learning, and the post–test session. The finding indicated that a concept of specific heat was at 84.55 percent which was higher than criterion at 0.05 (t = 18.22) level of significance, and students’ satisfaction was good. With a simple apparatus this set of experiment was highly suitable as a teaching material for the integration of Newton’s law of cooling and specific heat concepts.