An Arduino-based experiment designed to estimate the heat capacity of a nichrome resistor

Abstract

Abstract In this paper, we propose a simple experiment to discuss some fundamental concepts of electricity and thermal physics, based on a very popular device within the current education scenario, the Arduino. In this proposal, we use the Arduino microcontroller as a data acquisition device to obtain the temperature of a nichrome resistor, that heats up in a circuit by Joule Effect over time. Using the data obtained, we developed a protocol to experimentally estimate the nichrome resistor heat capacity.