Question #e1989

1 Answer
Apr 2, 2016

1.67 * 10^(18)"J"

Explanation:

The key to this problem is the specific heat of water, which is listed as

color(purple)(|bar(ul(color(white)(a/a)color(black)(c_"water" = "4.18 J g"^(-1)""^@"C"^(-1))color(white)(a/a)|)))

Now, a substance's specific heat tells you how much heat is required in order to increase the temperature of "1 g" of that substance by 1^@"C".

Water's specific heat tells you that you need "4.18 J" of heat in order to increase the temperature of "1 g" of water by 1^@"C".

In your case, you must increase the temperature 4.00 * 10^(11)"m"^3 of water by

DeltaT = 12.0^@"C" - 11.0^@"C" = 1.0^@"C"

This means that the the amount of heat needed will depend exclusively on the mass of water present in the lake.

If you assume that water has a density of "1000 kg m"^(-3), you can say that the volume of water present in the lake will amount to

4.00 * 10^(11)color(red)(cancel(color(black)("m"^3))) * "1000 kg"/(1color(red)(cancel(color(black)("m"^3)))) = 4.00 * 10^(14)"kg"

This will be equivalent to

4.00 * 10^(11)color(red)(cancel(color(black)("kg"))) * (10^3"g")/(1color(red)(cancel(color(black)("kg")))) = 4.00 * 10^(17)"g"

So, to increase the temperature of water by 1.0^@"C", you need to supply "4.18 J" for every gram you have in your sample, which means that you'll need

4.00 * 10^(14)color(red)(cancel(color(black)("g"))) * "4.18 J"/(1color(red)(cancel(color(black)("g")))) = color(green)(|bar(ul(color(white)(a/a)1.67 * 10^(18)"J"color(white)(a/a)|)))

The answer is rounded to three sig figs.