Honorable Mention

A Differential Scanning Calorimeter

Commercial differential scanning calorimeters used to measure enthalpy are often too expensive for colleges and universities. Although this project doesn’t provide the extremely high performance of the commercial devices, it is a remarkably low-cost alternative that is more than sufficient for classroom use. The goals of the project were to create an instrument that has a wide enough temperature range to demonstrate measurement, a fairly accurate temperature resolution, and decent accuracy in measuring enthalpy energy. Most importantly, it had to be rugged to withstand use in the lab. An ATmega8 microcontroller handles temperature control and measurement functions. A PC serves as the user interface and display.

Brian Millier

Canada

brian.millier@dal.ca

Abstract | Entry

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