Cooling hot water is the most common Question 2 in 0625 Paper 5. Read room temperature, then follow an insulated beaker and a bare beaker as they cool, reading the magnified thermometer every 30 s. The stopwatch runs six times faster and pauses at each reading. Compare the beakers, work out the rates of cooling and decide what makes the test fair. Every attempt is different. Allow about 15 minutes.
Past-paper referenceOriginal experiment, wording and numbers, written in the style of Cambridge IGCSE Physics 0625 Paper 5 (Practical Test), Question 2. It is not copied from a past paper.
Practise next: 0625/51 May/June 2023, Question 2 (the cooling of water, then the average rate of cooling) · official past papers
Practise next: 0625/52 February/March 2025, Question 2 (an insulated and an uninsulated beaker, rates of cooling and a fair test) · official past papers
This type of experiment has come up 73 times (38 in Paper 5, the Practical Test, and 35 in Paper 6, the Alternative to Practical) in the past papers we checked. Show the list
Checked: Cambridge IGCSE Physics 0625 Papers 5 and 6, 2014 to 2025. Only the papers in our collection are listed, so the real number may be higher. Question papers are available from Cambridge.
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How this question is marked
Readings (a), (b)
Room temperature and every thermometer reading to the nearest 0.5 °C, with headings that give the quantity and unit.
Analysis (c), (d)
Temperature falls from your own readings, a conclusion that compares them, and two rates of cooling for beaker B with the unit °C/s.
Evaluation (e) to (g)
Why the starting temperatures must match (the rate depends on temperature), why you read the scale at right angles, and how to show the trend.
Habits that save marks
Read the thermometer at t = 0 first, then start the stopwatch straight away.
Read at right angles to the scale to avoid parallax, to the nearest 0.5 °C.
A rate needs a time: a temperature fall divided by the time it took, in °C/s.
Hotter water cools faster, so a fair comparison needs the same starting temperature.
The marking follows the conventions in published Cambridge mark schemes. The experiments, readings and wording on this page are our own.