| Heat and Work Experiments |
The purpose of this page is to allow you to actively explore the nature of heat and work. To accomplish this goal, you can investigate a simple system that consisits of a cylinder with a movable piston. This cylinder can be filled with various amounts of gas and heat can be added to/removed from the system.
The system works in two modes: constant presure and constant volume. You will be able to monitor the energy of the system and observe the work done by/on the system.
In order to understand the relationships between heat, work, and energy, you should explore both the constant pressure and the constant volume systems.
Although these pages can be used independently, they have been designed for use with a series of worksheets. If you don't have the worksheets, download and print them now:
 go to the constant pressure system |
| go to the constant volume system |