Chemistry Required Practical: Combustion of Alcohols

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Investigate the temperature rise produced in a known mass of water by the combustion of the alcohols ethanol, propanol, butanol and pentanol.

Students burn the alcohols in spirit burners and heat water in a beaker or copper can. They can heat the water for a given amount of time and measure the temperature rise of water and the mass of alcohol that was burned.
Students should notice many possible errors in the experiment, including: heat loss to the surroundings, difficulty in having the same height of flame from each spirit burner, incomplete combustion, evaporation of alcohols during weighing.
There is an opportunity for students taking the higher tier to process their experimental data before plotting a graph, for example, they could calculate the temperature rise of water per gram of alcohol burned.

How to carry out and analyse results from the Core Practical on the combustion of alcohol and how to work out the temperature rise per gram?

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