Heat Capacity and Specific Heat

Introduction

Heat
Heat is a measure of how much thermal energy is transmitted from one body to another. We cannot say a body
“has” a certain amount of heat any more than we can say a body “has” a certain amount of work. While both
work and heat can be measured in terms of joules, they are not measures of energy but rather of energy
transfer. A hot water bottle has a certain amount of thermal energy; when you cuddle up with a hot water
bottle, it transmits a certain amount of heat to your body.

• Heat is a measure of an internal energy in a substance. It is measured in Joules.

Calories
Like work, heat can be measured in terms of joules, but it is frequently measured in terms of calories (cal).
Unlike joules, calories relate heat to changes in temperature, making them a more convenient unit of
measurement for the kinds of thermal physics problems you will encounter in Physics

A calorie is defined as the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree
Celsius. One calorie is equivalent to 4.19  J.

You’re probably most familiar with the word calorie in the context of a food’s nutritional content. However,
food calories are not quite the same as what we’re discussing here: they are actually Calories, with a capital “C,”
where 1  Calorie = 1000 calories. Also, these Calories are not a measure of thermal energy, but rather a measure
of the energy stored in the chemical bonds of food.

Specific Heat
Though heat and temperature are not the same thing, there is a correlation between the two, captured in a
quantity called specific heat, c . Specific heat measures how much heat is required to raise the temperature of
a certain mass of a given substance. Specific heat is measured in units of J/kg · º C or cal/g · º C. Every substance
has a different specific heat, but specific heat is a constant for that substance.
For instance, the specific heat of water,  , is   J/kg · ºC or 1 cal/g · ºC. That means it
takes   joules of heat to raise one kilogram of water by one degree Celsius. Substances that are easily
heated, like copper, have a low specific heat, while substances that are difficult to heat, like rubber, have a high
specific heat.
Specific heat allows us to express the relationship between heat and temperature in a mathematical formula:

where Q  is the heat transferred to a material, m  is the mass of the material, c  is the specific heat of the material,
and   is the change in temperature.
EXAMPLE
4190 J of heat are added to 0.5 kg of water with an initial temperature of 12ºC. What is the temperature of the
water after it has been heated?
By rearranging the equation above, we can solve for  :
The temperature goes up by 2 Cº, so if the initial temperature was 12ºC, then the final temperature is 14ºC.
Note that when we talk about an absolute temperature, we write ºC, but when we talk about a change in
temperature, we write Cº.
Phase Changes
As you know, if you heat a block of ice, it won’t simply get warmer. It will also melt and become liquid. If you
heat it even further, it will boil and become a gas. When a substance changes between being a solid, liquid, or
gas, we say it has undergone aphase change.
Melting Point and Boiling Point
If a solid is heated through its melting point, it will melt and turn to liquid. Some substances—for example,
dry ice (solid carbon dioxide)—cannot exist as a liquid at certain pressures and will sublimate instead,
turning directly into gas. If a liquid is heated through its boiling point, it will vaporize and turn to gas. If a
liquid is cooled through its melting point, it will freeze. If a gas is cooled through its boiling point, it will
condense into a liquid, or sometimes deposit into a solid, as in the case of carbon dioxide. These phase
changes are summarized in the figure below.

A substance requires a certain amount of heat to undergo a phase change. If you were to apply steady heat to a
block of ice, its temperature would rise steadily until it reached 0ºC. Then the temperature would remain
constant as the block of ice slowly melted into water. Only when all the ice had become water would the
temperature continue to rise.

The heat capacity of a body is the quantity of heat necessary to raise its temperature by 1°C.

The heat capacity of a substance is a measure of how well the substance stores heat. Whenever we supply heat to
a material, it will necessarily cause an increase in the material's temperature.

Thus, materials with large heat capacities, like water, hold heat well - their temperature won't rise much for a
given amount of heat - whereas materials with small heat capacities, like copper, don't hold heat well - their
temperature will rise significantly when heat is added.

Specific heat is the amount of heat necessary to raise the temperature of 1 g of a substance by one degree.

Heat capacity (usually denoted by a capital C, often with subscripts) is the measurable physical quantity that

characterizes the amount ofheat required to change a body's temperature by a given amount. In the International
System of Units, heat capacity is expressed in units ofjoules per kelvin.
Specific Heat Capacity (C or S ) - The quantity of heat required to raise the temperature of a substance by
one degree Celsius is called the specific heat capacity of the substance. The quantity of heat is frequently
measured in units of Joules(J). Another property, the specific heat, is the heat capacity of the substance
per gram of the substance. The specific heat of water is 4.18 J/g° C.

Substance  C (J/g oC)
 Air  1.01
 Aluminum  0.902
 Copper  0.385
 Gold  0.129
 Iron  0.450
 Mercury  0.140
 NaCl  0.864
 Ice  2.03
 Water  4.18
   

q = m x C x T

q = m x C x (Tf - Ti)
q = amount of heat energy gained or lost by substance
m = mass of sample
C = heat capacity (J oC-1 g-1 or J K-1 g-1)
Tf = final temperature
Ti = initial temperature

Unit

Heat Capacity

Specific heat

Difference

Example problems

Change of phase
 Specific Heat and Heat Capacity

Specific heat is another physical property of matter. All matter has a temperature associated
with it. The temperature of matter is a direct measure of the motion of the molecules: The
greater the motion the higher the temperature:

Motion requires energy: The more energy matter has the higher temperature it will also have.
Typicall this energy is supplied by heat. Heat loss or gain by matter is equivalent energy loss
or gain.

With the observation above understood we con now ask the following question: by how much
will the temperature of an object increase or decrease by the gain or loss of heat energy? The
answer is given by the specific heat (S) of the object. The specific heat of an object is defined
in the following way: Take an object of mass m, put in x amount of heat and carefully note the
temperature rise, then S is given by

In this definition mass is usually in either grams or kilograms and temperatture is either in
kelvin or degres Celcius. Note that the specific heat is "per unit mass". Thus, the specific heat
of a gallon of milk is equal to the specific heat of a quart of milk. A related quantity is called
the heat capacity (C). of an object. The relation between S and C is C = (mass of obect) x
(specific heat of object). A table of some common specific heats and heat capacities is given
below:
 Some common specific
heats and heat
capacities:
 C
 S
 Substanc (J/0C
(J/g0C
e ) for
)
100 g
 Air  1.01  101
 Aluminu
 0.902  90.2
m
 Copper  0.385  38.5
 Gold  0.129  12.9
 Iron  0.450  45.0
 Mercury  0.140  14.0
 NaCl  0.864  86.4
 Ice  2..03  203
 41.7
 Water  4.179
9
     

Consider the specific heat of copper , 0.385 J/g 0C. What this means is that it takes 0.385
Joules of heat to raise 1 gram of copper 1 degree celcius. Thus, if we take 1 gram of copper at
25 0C and add 1 Joule of heat to it, we will find that the temperature of the copper will have
risen to 26 0C. We can then ask: How much heat wil it take to raise by 1 0C 2g of copper?.
Clearly the answer is 0.385 J for each gram or 2x0.385 J = 0.770 J. What about a pound of
copper? A simple way of dealing with different masses of matter is to dtermine the heat
capacity C as defined above. Note that C depends upon the size of the object as opposed to S
that does not.

We are not in position to do some calculations with S and C.

Example 1: How much energy does it take to raise the temperature of 50 g of copper by 10
0C?
Example 2: If we add 30 J of heat to 10 g of aluminum, by how much will its temperature
increase?

Thus, if the initial temperture of the aluminum was 20 0C then after the heat is added the
temperature will be 28.3 0C.