When you turn on the power supply, the current in the circuit (i.e the moving charges) does work on the heater, transferring energy electrically from the power supply to the heater’s thermal energy store. This energy is then transferred to the block’s thermal energy store by heating, causing the block’s temperature to increase.
Instead of using an ammeter (and a voltmeter), you may use a joulemeter which tells you directly how much energy is being transferred, meaning you can skip calculating the power of the heater and the energy transferred to the heater.
You can also investigate the specific heat capacity of liquids - place the immersion heater and thermometer in an insulated beaker filled with a known mass of the liquid.
This experiment can be repeated with different materials to see how their specific heat capacities compare.

	Created by Tree Kangaroo over 4 years ago

GCSE AQA Physics required practical