AUTHOR: Huong Vu

DATE PERFORMED: October 22, 2007

CLASS: PHYS 227
SECTION: 11:10 am Monday

LAB TITLE: Power, Resistors, and Temperature Dependence in Resistive Circuits

GROUP MEMBERS:
Khoa Le
Tinh Nguyen
Tung Phan
Paula Perez

ABSTRACT:
In this experiment, the conservation of energy in DC resistive circuits was verified.
First of all, the mean value of current and voltage passing through the calorimeter were
collected. Then, according to the data, experimenters can calculate the heat capacity of the
calorimeter cup and water, the energy dissipated by the resistor, and energy needed to raise
the temperature of water. Next, the slope (dT/dt) of the temperature versus time was
collected. The power of the resistor was calculated by the current and voltage. Eventually,
the RLC circuit was used to make a series circuit. The current is collected by increasing the
voltage. Then, the graph of voltage vs. current was drawn. The resistance was determined
by taking the slope of the graph. The percentage of error is 4.3% and 57% respectfully. The
lab was partly successful.

INTRODUCTION:
Conservation of energy occurred not only in physics but also in many others science
area, such as chemistry. Energy can change forms but cannot be created or destroyed. This
also happens in electric circuits. The energy supplied by an emf will be transferred to
capacitors and other emfs or dissipated by resistors. The Kirchhoff's second law is a
consequence of the principal of conservation of energy. It is often used in electrical
engineering.

THEORY:

APPARATUS LIST:
Power Amplifier, Signal Generator, Voltage sensor, Calorimeter, Current sensor,
Temperature sensor, Thermometer, RLC circuit
PROCEDURE C:

Current ( A ) Voltage ( V )
0.0195 0.0696
0.0352 0.1489
0.0462 0.2411
0.0518 0.3308
0.0559 0.4291
0.0592 0.5237
0.0734 0.9101
0.1053 1.8915
0.1323 2.8303
0.1559 3.7977
0.1771 4.8109
0.1963 5.7686
0.2139 6.7159

Voltage ( V )

8
7
6
5
voltage

4
Voltage ( V )
3
2
1
0
0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25
current
CONCLUSION:
The experiment was partial successful. The percent error in the first procedure was
small (4.3%). However, in the second procedure, the error was too big (57%). Perhaps the
error occurred when experimenters collected data for different time. Despite of the wrong
data in procedure B, the energy is actually conserved in electric circuits. Moreover, the
resistance increases as the temperature increases. The conservation of energy was
examined.

QUESTIONS:
1) The conservation of energy is confirmed in procedure A since the energy dissipated by
the resistor (1994J) is nearly equal to the energy needed to raise the temperature of water
(2084J). Some energy transfers were ignored in the calculation, such as the heat capacity of
the stirrer, the heat capacity of the thermometer and the voltage passing through the resistor
in the current sensor. These missing energies explain the discrepancies in the data.

2) dQ/dt is the rate of the thermal energy changing with respect to time. Then, P is the
power of the electric current in the circuit. These two values are supposed to close to each
other. Theoretically, they should be equal. However, the data is incorrect with a big error
occurred.

3) The voltage of the Power Amplifier is not equal to the voltage across the resistor because
we ignored the value of resistance on the current sensor.

4) The resistor in the light bulb is the resistor of the filament of the bulb. It is actually non-
ohmic because the graph between the current and the voltage is not linear. According to the
graph, the resistance increases as the temperature of the filament increases..