a foundry has an electric furnace that even completely melt 540kg of copper. if the temp. of the copper has intially 20 degree Celsius, what total heat is needed to melt the copper?
First, find the heat capacity of copper and then you can calculate the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature to the melting point. Then you have to calculate the heat of solidification of copper and then add the two together to get an approximate answer. Metals like copper when solid can be in a variety of different phases depending upon the pressure and temperature when they solidified when cast. The heat capacity also changes over different temperature ranges so you need to take that into account. If the Cu is pure then it will form a semi-crystalline structure and each of these has a different energy level. If two metals are mixed the % of each in the mixture also changes the melting point and the associated heats.
