EXPERIMENT 5: THERMAL EXPANSION OF A SOLID

Most materials expand if heated and shrink when cooled. There are a few exceptions, such as water,
which shows anomalous thermal expansion: the volume of one gram of water shrinks when its
temperature is increased from 0 °C - 4 °C. The thermal expansion of materials has to be taken into
account in the design of mechanical structures. As an example, consider a rod whose ends are rigidly
fixed and whose temperature is changed. Stresses set up in the rod due to expansion (temperature
increase) or shrinking (temperature decrease) may become sufficiently large to stress the rod beyond
its elastic limit or its breaking point. Differential thermal expansion of materials may also be utilised
in many devices. A bimetallic thermometer, made of two narrow strips of metal attached together as
shown below, will bend according to the temperature. Such devices are often used as thermostats.

metal 1
metal 2

Accurate measurements of the thermal expansion coefficient are of importance to engineers for the
reasons stated above. This information is also of interest to physicists, because the thermal expansion
of solids can reveal information about interatomic forces in solids. How we extract that information
from experiment is beyond the scope of first year physics. The goal of this experiment is to study
the thermal expansion of brass and stainless steel, and obtain the linear thermal expansion
coefficients. The expansion of solids is usually of the order of 0.1%, and is therefore difficult to
measure. We utilise a technique that allows us to measure small displacements with high precision.

The experiment

The apparatus used to investigate the expansion of the metal samples is shown below. It consists of
a hollow metal tube of either brass or stainless steel through which water and steam are passed in
turn.

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The small change in length of the tube is measured by using an optical lever, which consists of a
platform, which functions as a lever, and a plane mirror mounted on top, as shown below. Light
from a projection lamp is reflected by the mirror and falls on scale. One side of the platform (points
A and A') rests on a fixed surface, while the other side (point B) rests on the metal tube.

When the tube expands by a small amount l, the platform tilts by an angle . As a result the
deflection angle of the light beam is increased by 2. It is not difficult to see that a small displacement
of the edge of the platform leads to a substantial displacement, d, of the light spot on the scale,
providing the distance D between the scale and the plane mirror is sufficiently large.

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NB: The solid lines in the figure indicate the position of the optical lever before thermal expansion,
while the broken lines represent the new position of the lever after a linear thermal expansion of l
due to a temperature rise of T C.

It can be shown, by considering the sketch on the previous page, that

ad
l  . (1)
2D

Focus the lamp on the scale. Let cold water enter at the lower end, and pass upward through the
brass tube. After thermal equilibrium is reached, measure the temperature T1 of the water and record
the position of the light spot on the scale. Disconnect the water mains from the lower end of the tube,
and connect the upper end of the tube to a boiling kettle. After thermal equilibrium has been reached,
measure the temperature T2 of the steam, and record the position of the light spot on the scale.
Exercise care when you are dealing with steam, so that you do not burn yourself or a colleague.
Disconnect the kettle from the tube, and reconnect the water mains. After thermal equilibrium has
been reached, measure the temperature T1*, and record the position of the light spot. If the position
of the light spot has changed by more than the estimated error in a single reading then a systematic
error has occurred. You should redo the measurement. Measure the quantities a, d and D, as well as
the length of the tube at room temperature l0. Repeat the above procedure for the stainless steel
sample.

Data Analysis

In order to analyse the data several simplifying assumptions are made. It is assumed that the relative
increase in the length of a solid due to thermal expansion is directly proportional to the increase in
temperature T and the initial length of the tube l0, and the proportionality constant  is known as
the coefficient of linear thermal expansion. Our simple model may be written as

l   l0 T . (2)
𝑙 − 𝑙o = 𝛼𝑙o ∆𝑇
so 𝑙 = 𝑙o (1 + 𝛼∆𝑇) = 𝑙o (1 + 𝛼(𝑇 − 𝑇o )) where 𝑙 is the length at temperature 𝑇 and 𝑙o is the length at
temperature 𝑇o .

The assumptions made above have been shown to be good assumptions for a large number of solids,
provided T ~ 100 °C. The results you have obtained may be used with the simple model described
above to find the linear expansion coefficients of brass and stainless steel.

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