Name and student number:
Group members:
Physics 157 Tutorial 1 – Temperature and Thermal Expansion
In this tutorial, you will get some practice thinking about thermometry and the
thermal expansion of materials.
You will work in groups of three or four, but each person should complete their
own worksheet to hand in. Your worksheet will be graded for participation
credit. You are not required to finish everything on the worksheet. You
should show your work.
Ask the TA to come to your group if you are stuck.
Important formulae:
Temperature is proportional to pressure for an ideal gas: T/P = constant
Linear expansion due to temperature change: ΔL th = α L ΔT
Volume expansion: ΔV = β V ΔT β = 3α for solids
Question 1: A spherical container has a constant volume, is filled with an
ideal gas, and has a pressure gauge showing the pressure in the gas. The
container is placed in a tub of water and after a long time the pressure gauge
shows a pressure of 100 kPa and the water temperature is 50°C. You decide
to add some ice to the tub of water. After a long time, the pressure gauge now
reads a pressure of 80 kPa. The temperature of the gas in the spherical
container is closest to:
40°C
-40°C
14°C
-14°C
not enough information to tell
1
Question 2: At a temperature of 20 degrees Celsius, you use a steel ruler to
measure the length of a brass rod and find it to be 20.00 cm. What would you
measure the length of the brass rod to be using the same ruler if both the rod
and the ruler are at a temperature of 270 degrees Celsius?
The coefficients of linear expansion for brass and steel are αb = 2.0 x 10-5 K-1
and αs = 1.2 x 10-5 K-1, respectively.
20.10 cm
20.02 cm
19.96 cm
20.04 cm
20.06 cm
2
Question 3: The length of one side of an aluminum cube is 1.0 m at a
temperature of 20°C. The coefficient of linear thermal expansion of aluminum
is 13 x 10-6 K-1. The change in volume of the cube when it is heated to a
temperature of 40°C is closest to:
1.3 x 10-4 m3
2.6 x 10-4 m3
3.9 x 10-4 m3
5.2 x 10-4 m3
7.8 x 10-4 m3
3
Question 4: To help raise money to buy Mastering Physics codes, you and
some friends decide to sell bottles of home-made kombucha in 0.4 L glass
bottles for $3.50 each at the Totem Park cafeteria. You have 500 full bottles of
kombucha stored at 4.0oC. You are originally planning to sell it chilled, but
after attending the first few Physics 157 lectures and looking up the thermal
expansion coefficients of kombucha (βkombucha = 34.2 x 10-5 K-1) and glass
(αglass = 5.4 x 10-6 K-1), you realize that if you dump out all the kombucha into a
big container and then re-fill bottles in the cafeteria (at 26.0oC) to sell warm,
you’ll make more money. If it costs you $0.50 for each extra glass bottle, how
much extra money will you make this way?