The approximate determination of the critical temperature of a liquid by measuring surface tension versus the temperature

摘要

A classical experience in a physics student laboratory is to determine the surface tension of a liquid versus the temperature and to check the linear appearance of the obtained graph. In this work we show a simple method to estimate the critical temperature of three liquids by using experimental data of surface tension at different temperatures. By a logarithm fitting between surface tension and temperature, the critical temperature can be determined and compared with data from the literature. For two liquids (butanol and nitrobenzene) the comparison is acceptable but the differences are too high for the third liquid (water). By discussing the results it seems to be clear that the difference between the critical temperature of the liquid and the maximum temperature of the surface tension measurements is the determining factor in obtaining acceptable results. From this study it is possible to obtain more information on the liquid characteristics from surface tension measurements that are currently carried out in a student laboratory. Besides, in this paper it is shown how to select the most suitable liquids which provide both acceptable values for the critical temperature and measurements of the surface tension at moderate temperatures. The complementary use of numerical methods permits us to offer a complete experience for the students with a simple laboratory experiment which we recommend for physics students in advanced university courses.