CASE OVERVIEW

Background:
o George Higginbotham has been murdered!
o He was hit in the back at the head with a metal cylinder that was taken to the crime
lab as evidence.
o Three suspects have been arrested in connection with the murder:
o -wife) Ms. Higginbotham
claims she last saw Mr. Higginbotham on the morning of his murder. They
were discussing their upcoming alimony case. Her father owns the largest
aluminum plant in the Southeast.
o -worker) They worked together at the
zinc mine. Mr. Higginbotham had just gotten a promotion over Mr. West and
witnesses say that they overheard Mr. West threaten. Mr. Higginbotham.
o Casey Cannon (Mr. Mr. Higginbotham
has been paying Casey to stay quiet about his paternity since Casey was 10.
Just this past month. Mr. Higginbotham stopped sending Casey money. Casey
lives two states away and w
sorting the lead that comes into the junk yard.

The murder weapon has been taken as evidence and CSI team is now working on identifying the
type of metal that was used to make the pipe.
Part A: Experiment Procedure
CSI team decided to determine the SPECIFIC HEAT Capacity and to use it
to identify the unknown metal. They decided to heat up the metal and to
put it into room temperature water to calculate specific heat capacity.

Frank measures the metal mass and Eve recorded 276.4g.

Yana prepared boiling water and put the unknown metal inside beaker she
previously labeled using letter A. (beaker A)

After about 10 minutes, Vivian used tongs to remove hot metal from boiling
o
water and Benny recorded the temperature of the metal 100.0 C.

Belinda and Nora measured 500mL of water and labeled it as beaker B.

Caylee measured initial temperature of water and recorded 24.1oC.

Ian use tongs to place hot metal into (room temperature) water.

Mason measured final temperature of water 27.8oC.

Cheryl measured final temperature of metal 27.8oC.

Catherine assumed that now metal and water reached balance/equilibrium.

And they agree to continue measuring temperature for few more minutes.

William confirmed that the both water and metal temperature are
unchanged 27.8oC.

Alex used the Specific heat capacity table and recorded water specific heat
capacity 4.184 J/goC
Part A: Experimental Data
Use the data from Experiment Procedure to complete the following:

500
A. Mass of water (g) _______________________________(water density is 1.00 g/mL)

24.19
o
B. Initial Temperature of water ( C) __________________

276.4
C. Mass of metal (g) __________________________________
o
D. Initial temperature of metal ( C)___________________
100
o
E. Final temperature of water ( C)____________________
278
o
F. Final temperature of metal ( C)____________________
278
37
Tinital)_______________________

728
Tinital)_______________________

4.184
o
I. Specific heat capacity of water ________________joule/gram C

Part B: Calculations
Heat (Energy Change) in water Heat (Energy Change) in metal
Formula q=cm T Formula q=cm T
q- heat added to water q- heat lost
m-mass of water m-mass of metal
c-specific heat capacity of water c-specific heat capacity of metal
T temperature change (unknown)
T temperature change

qwater =-qmetal

0.40
o
c=______________________joule/gram C
 o
Metal Specific heat capacity (J/g C)
Aluminum
009
Zinc
Lead
0.39
0 13

Identify the unknown metal

zinc

Who killed Mr. Higginbotham?

Jim West

Extend:
In the space provided below, draw an illustration of what took place in the
experiment in terms of heat exchange. Your illustration should answer following
questions:
Where did heat initially come from?
How did the metal cylinder gain the heat energy?
Were did the energy go once the metal cylinder moved to beaker B?
What happened to the temperature of metal and water in each of two beakers?

Beaker A Beaker B