Abstract
This contribution describes a simple procedure for the study of the cooling of a spherical body using a standard thermometer and a smartphone. Experiments making use of smartphone sensors have been described before, contributing to an improved teaching of classical mechanics (Chaps. 8, 13, 27 and 29) [1–11], but rarely expand to thermodynamics (Chaps. 53 and 54) [12–14]. In this experiment, instead of using a smartphone camera to slow down a fast movement, we are using the device to speed up a slow process. For that we propose the use of the free app Framelapse [15] to take periodic pictures (in the form of a time-lapse video) and then the free app VidAnalysis [16] to track the position of the mercury inside the thermometer, thus effortlessly tracking the temperature of a cooling body (Fig. 55.1).
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Acknowledgments
CFisUC gratefully acknowledges funding from FCT Portugal through Grant UID/FIS/04564/2016. P.M-R would like to thank Santander Universidades for its financial support through the Becas Iberoamérica Jóvenes Profesores e Investigadores, España 2017 scholarship program.
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Silva, M.R., Martín-Ramos, P., da Silva, P.P. (2022). Studying Cooling Curves with a Smartphone. In: Kuhn, J., Vogt, P. (eds) Smartphones as Mobile Minilabs in Physics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94044-7_55
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