1. The concrete sections of a certain superhighway are designed to have a length of 25 m.

The
sections are poured and cured at 10C. What minimum spacing should the engineer leave between
the sections to eliminate buckling if the concrete is to reach a temperature of 50C?

2. A concrete walk is poured on a day when the temperature is 20C in such a way that the ends are
unable to move. (a) What is the stress in the cement on a hot day of 50C? (b) Does the concrete
fracture? Take Young's modulus for concrete to be 710
9
N/m
2
and the compressive strength to be
2 10
9
N/m
2
.

3. At the bottom of old mercury-in-glass thermometer is a 45-mm
3
reservoir filled with mercury.
When the thermometer was placed under your tongue, the warmed mercury would expand into a
very narrow cylindrical channel, called a capillary, whose radius was 1.7 x 10
-2
mm. Marks were
placed along the capillary that indicated temperature. Ignore the thermal expansion of the glass
and determine how far (in mm) the mercury would expand into the capillary when the temperature
changed by 1C?

4. Two identical thermometers made of Pyrex glass contain, respectively, identical volumes of
mercury and ethyl alcohol. If the expansion of the glass is taken into account, how many times
greater is the distance between the degree marks on the methyl alcohol thermometer than that on
the mercury thermometer?

5. The coefficient of volume expansion for gold is 4.20 10
5
/C. The density of gold is 19 300 kg/m
3

at 0.0 C. What is the density of gold at 1050 C?

6. A copper wire and a lead wire are joined together, end to end. The compound wire has an effective
coefficient of linear expansion of 20 x 10
-6
/ C. What fraction of the length of the compound wire
is copper?
coefficient of linear expansion of copper is 17 x 10
-6
/C
coefficient of linear expansion of lead is 29 x 10
-6
/C

7. During an all-night cram session, a student heats up a one-half liter glass (pyrex) beaker of cold
coffee. Initially, the temperature is 18C, and the beaker is filled to the brim. A short time later
when the student returns, the temperature has risen to 92C. The coefficient of volume expansion
of coffee is the same as that of water. How much coffee has spilled out of the beaker?

WATER
=207 x 10
-6
/C
GLASS
= 3.3 x 10
-6
/C

8. A hollow aluminum cylinder 20 cm deep has an internal capacity of 2 L at 20C. It is completely
filled with turpentine, and then slowly warmed to 80C. (a) How much turpentine overflows? (b) If
the cylinder is then cooled back to 20C, how far below the cylinder's rim does the turpentines
surface recede?

9. The brass bar and aluminum bar in the drawing are
attached to an immovable wall. At 28C the air gap
between the rods is 2.5x10
-3
m. At what temperature
will the gap be closed?

BRASS
=

19 x 10
-6
/C

aluminum
= 24 x 10
-6
/C
mercury
= 1.82 x 10
-4
/C

glass, pyrex
= 3.2 x 10
-6
/C
ethyl alcohol
= 1.12 x 10
-4
/C

concrete
= 12 x 10
-6
/C
turpentine
= 9 x 10
-4
/C

steel
= 11 x 10
-6
/C
PROBLEM SET
Thermal Expansion
PHY12 April 28, 2014