Question 6 After a brief holiday at a beauty spa, the gold prospector is back in Sydney and wants to sell you some silver. Knowing the prospector, the metal he

is offering you is likely to just be some shiny tin, so you decide to test it out for yourself. The prospector gives you a 10.0 gram piece of the metal, and you perform an experiment to measure its specific heat capacity. You have a thermally insulated vessel, and a very accurate set of scales and thermometer with negligible error in their readings. You put 100 grams of water into the thermal isolation chamber and heat it to 90.0 °C. You then put in the piece of metal which was at 25.0 °C. You leave the chamber with the lid on until the water and metal come to thermal equilibrium. In the meantime, you manage to break your accurate thermometer, leaving you with a regular off-the-wall thermometer. You measure the final temperature of the system at thermal equilibrium to be 87 + 1 °C. i) Using your knowledge of specific heat capacity, can you tell from this experiment whether this piece of metal is tin or silver? If so, which is it? If not,prove why not. ii) Challenge question: If not, what would be the minimum mass of metal that you would need to be able to discern the type of metal if the error in reading the thermometer is always 1 °C? (note that the final equilibrium temperature would then be different.)