Calorimetry Lab

Welcome to the Calorimetry Gen Chem Lab...sort of...

As was discussed in lecture this morning, the current chapter is titled thermochemistry...the heat associated with a chemical reaction. You now have a clear understanding of a chemical reactions...there are reactants, products, balancing coefficients, and now there is heat. Let's start our conversation with a simple observation.

Thermal Imaging

All living organisms have many chemical reactions going on 24/7. Most of these reactions are exothermic, meaning that these reactions give off heat. So you should not be surprised to see that a person, like the man on the left is radiating heat. As you know, humans are warm blooded organisms that maintain their body temperature at 37 ^oC or 98.6 ^oF. The above images use infrared (IR) imaging to detect the heat (IR light) emitting from all warm blooded organisms. We will talk more about IR light in our next chapter.

The woman above and in the middle has an IR image that i slightly different from the man.

Q: What differences do you see? (write these down in your notes...then move on).