Welcome to Virtual ChemLab: Calorimetry, a realistic and sophisticated simulation of calorimetric and thermochemical experiments. In this virtual laboratory, students are free to make the choices and decisions that they would confront in actual calorimetric experiments and, in turn, experience the resulting consequences. As in all of the virtual laboratories, the main focus of the calorimetry laboratory is to allow students the ability to explore and discover, in a safe and level-appropriate setting, the concepts and ideas that are important in the study of chemical thermodynamics.

The virtual calorimetry laboratory provides students with three different calorimeters that allow them to measure various thermodynamic processes including heats of combustion, heats of solution, heats of reaction, the heat capacity, and the heat of fusion. The calorimeters provided in the simulations are a classic "coffee cup" calorimeter, a dewar flask (a better version of a coffee cup), and a bomb calorimeter. The calorimetric method used in each calorimeter is based on measuring the temperature change in the calorimeter caused by the different thermodynamic processes. Students can choose from a wide selection of organic materials to measure the heats of combustion; salts to measure the heats of solution; acids and bases for heats of reaction; metals and alloys for heat capacity measurements; and ice for a melting process. Boiling point elevation and freezing point depressions can also be measured. Temperature versus time data can be graphed during the measurements and saved to the electronic lab book for later analysis. Systematic and random errors in the mass and volume measurements have been included in the simulation by introducing buoyancy errors in the mass weighings, volumetric errors in the glassware, and characteristic systematic and random errors in the thermometer measurements.