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The Chemical Educator
ISSN: 1430-4171 (electronic version)
Abstract Volume 30
(2025) pp 34-36
Enthalpy of Hydrogen Peroxide Decomposition Using an Open Platform Microcontroller-based Data Logger/Thermocouple
David L. Myers, Marc Hill and Eugene T. Smith*
Honors College-Florida Atlantic University, Jupiter, FL, esmith@fau.edu
Received May 17, 2024. Accepted March 01, 2025.
Published: 8 March 2025
Abstract. A laboratory exercise is described for computing the enthalpy of decomposition of hydrogen peroxide using an open platform microcontroller-based datalogger fitted with a thermocouple. The lab is appropriate for Quantitative Analysis, Instrumental Methods, and General Chemistry. The assembly, testing and calibration of a data logger thermocouple, which consists of a printed circuit board (PCB) and an mbed microcontroller development board is performed in the upper division chemistry courses. In General Chemistry, students use the data logger connected to a laptop computer to record temperatures in real-time directly into an Excel spreadsheet. This same spreadsheet template is used to determine the enthalpy of hydrogen peroxide decomposition. Students found that the data logger thermocouple was easier to use than a commercially available device.
Key Words: Laboratories and Demonstrations; analytic chemistry
(*) Corresponding author. (E-mail: esmith@fau.edu)
Article in PDF format(217 KB) HTML format
Supporting Materials:
The following files are found in the Supplemental Material: (2044 KB)
(a) Supplemental Material/Student handout
(b) Excel template (DL-23-100.xls)
(c) mbed program text (DL-mbedcode.txt) and compiled(DL-23-100_LPC1768.bin)
(d) PCB Eagle files (DL-23-100.brd and DL-23-100.sch).
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