ok so, try the following experiment. put boiling water into an *open* thermos flask. heat loss through conduction is minimal, so almost everything you see is heat loss due to water's immense heat of evaporation, and evaporate it does
How to measure the volume of your bathtub: - Fill with cold water - Heat electrically with known constant power - Measure rate of temperature change
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a better idea is to time filling a container of a known volume with cold water, and then, without turning the knob, time filling the entire bathtub
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Alternative: Fill with water, add a known amount of a strong acid or base and measure resulting pH.
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That's a horrible way of measuring the volume, even by comparison to my method. :P The resulting pH would always just be extremely close to 7. Much better: Add known quantity of NaCl and measure electric conductivity.
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Subtract leakage through the tub to the house inner walls
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I'm sure you're only half-kidding here, given your current lack of piped hot water, but what about ambient losses? ;) Maybe measure the rate of cooling too?
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Depending of the height of the power, your measurement will be a bit off, or a lot
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You're missing important steps. Like stepping out of the bathtub before applying electricity.
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Physicists will do this: measure the length and width of the tube, calculate the mean, consider it the diameter of a perfect sphere, use the formula for its volume, call the discrepancy "experimental error" and write a paper about it.
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I've got a great formula for predicting the results of horse races! Unfortunately it only works for spherical horses in vacuum..
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