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.
Myers et al. (Sat,) studied this question.