Calorimetric determination of Enthalpy of Combustion

Early experimental effort at providing home tuition in chemistry via YouTube. Please visit www.chemy.info for later efforts using a better video camera. A simple calorimetric approach is used to determine the molar enthalpy change of combustion of methanol. This videoclip looks at the practical details and the mathematical calculations used to get joules from temperature change. 0.6g of methanol (CH3OH) is burned - causing the temperature of 100g of water (specific heat capacity 4.2J/g/K) to rise by 20 celcius. The enthalpy change is determined to be -420 kJ/mol. This value will be lower than expected due to heat losses to the surroundings. Apologies for the poor quality of the video and the very basic form of presentation used. If it's a topic that's causing you difficulties, perhaps it will be of some help. Rgds FS