Essential idea: Thermal physics deftly demonstrates the links between the macroscopic measurements essential to many scientific models with the microscopic properties that underlie these models.
Nature of science: Evidence through experimentation: Scientists from the 17th and 18th centuries were working without the knowledge of atomic structure and sometimes developed theories that were later found to be incorrect, such as phlogiston and perpetual motion capabilities. Our current understanding relies on statistical mechanics providing a basis for our use and understanding of energy transfer in science.
Understandings: Specific heat capacity
Guidance: Calculating energy changes involving specific heat capacity
Data booklet equations: Q= mc∆T
Oxford Physics (2014): pages 95-97 (including worked example and experimental determination)
Hamper HL (2014): pages 106-107 (includes worked examples and exercises 11 - 15) , 111 (experimental determination), 356-357 (surface heat capacity)
Hamper SL (2014): pages 106-107 (includes worked examples and exercises 11 - 15) , 111 (experimental determination), 285 (effects on coastal winds)
pages 145-150