Hold the Heat: Global Warming and Calorimetry

In this Activity, students perform quantitative calorimetric measurements on samples of ice/water heated by incandescent light bulbs and/or convection with room-temperature surroundings. They measure and graph temperature as a function of time. They observe that the temperature of the ice water samples remains constant for a time as the ice melts, and that the addition of heat energy to a substance does not necessarily cause its temperature to increase. This is linked with the topic of global warming, and can be extended to include a broader discussion of this topic. This Activity can also be a stand-alone introduction to calorimetry.