4

Liquid

specific heat capacities

Conduction

Thermal Equilibrium

Toxic

14
 Why does some things melt faster?

Materials:

You will need

1. Milk Chocolate 5. A flashlight or Reading light
2. Dark Chocolate 6. A Plate
4. Stopwatch

Experiment Guide:

Place holder Place holder Place holder

for photo for photo for photo

1. Put a piece of dark 2. Repeat step 1 but with 3. Put a piece of chocolate
chocolate in your mouth milk chocolate. on a plate. Hold the
Start the timer and see how flashlight or reading light
long it takes for the over the chocolate.
chocolate to melt Measure how fast it melts

Useful Information:

Cacao butter, cacao, milk and sugar. When all these things are mixed, they creates chocolate. If you put more cacao in
and less milk and cacao butter the chocolate will be darker and if you put less cacao in the chocolate will be lighter or as
we call it milk chocolate.

If you have tried putting chocolate outside in the sun you might have seen that it melts and becomes a liquid, and in
this experiment, we try to figure out how fast and which one of these two chocolates melts faster.
But do you know why?
The reason that one melts faster than the other is because they have different “specific heat capacities”, heat capacity is
how much energy you need to put into something to make its temperature rise by 1 degree Celsius.

Dark chocolate has a specific heat capacity of 4.59J/g· °C

And milk chocolate has a specific heat capacity of 4.15J/g· °C

Which one do you think will melt faster?

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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 Why does some things melt faster?

Observations Guide:

Timetable Milk Chocolate Dark Chocolate

Mouth (Minutes and Seconds)

________________________________ ________________________________
Plate (Minutes and Seconds)

________________________________ ________________________________

What did I learn?:

1. Why did the chocolate melt?

The chocolate melted because the _________________ from the mouth or flashlight was
transferred to the ____________________ and therefore it melted.

2. What does specific heat capacity mean?

How much energy something How much energy something How hot
needs to get 1 °C hotter needs to get 1 °C colder something can get

3. Draw a line in the direction the thermal energy moves

Mouth Chocolate