Build the apparatus yourself: place each piece of equipment on the bench and wire up the circuit, including the voltmeter.
Drag equipment onto the bench and arrange it however you like. Drag from the small dots on each instrument to wire up the circuit yourself — including the voltmeter. Everything here also works by clicking: pick an item, then tap it again to place it; tap one terminal, then another, to wire them.
The supply is not perfectly steady, so these drift a little as the run goes on — which is why the data table records V and I at each reading, rather than assuming they stay fixed at the dial setting.
Before you can switch the heater on, set up your measurements: put a block on the balance and turn the supply voltage up.
Changing anything above starts the run again — a set of results has to come from one set-up.
| Time (s) | Temp (°C) | V (V) | I (A) | Your ΔE (J) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 20.7 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
Work out the energy supplied for each row yourself: ΔE = V × I × t, using that row's own readings and the time since the heater went on. Get it right and the point joins your graph below — it plots the figure you calculated, not the sim's.
Your line of best fit appears once you have three readings.
On this plot the gradient is 1 / (m × c).
Run the experiment for at least 90 seconds, then come back here to analyse your results.
AQA GCSE Physics Required Practical — interactive simulation.