A student doing this experiment decided to check the accuracy of the thermometer. When placed in a beaker of boiling water, the thermometer indicated 103 C. When placed in an ice bath, the indicated temperature was 3.5 C. Would using this thermometer in this experiment cause any errors in the calculated delta H dissolution ? Briefly explain.
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Only a very slight one. In the experiment, you measure change in temperature (Tfinal - Tinitial). Since the thermometer has pretty close the the correct difference between ice and boiling water, you would expect that temperature differences that you measured in the experiment would be pretty close to correct. They will be slightly off since the thermometer has only 99.5 C difference rather than 100, but that's not too bad.