Specific heat capacity is how much heat energy a mass of a material must absorb before it increases 1°C. It’s how much heat is needed to raise the temperature of 1 gram of the material. Heat Capacity is how much heat is required to raise the temperature. The units of heat capacity are J per Kelvin, whereas for specific heat capacity, the units are J per (gram-K).
Each material has its own specific heat. The higher a material’s specific heat, the more heat it must absorb before it increases in temperature. Water is unique in that it has a very large specific heat. Liquid water’s specific heat is over 4 which is very high. In comparison, granite is 0.8, aluminum is 0.9, rubbing alcohol is 2.4 and gold is 0.1.
To get the same amount of rubbing alcohol and liquid water to increase the same amount of temperature, you would need to pump about twice the amount of heat into the water. To get the same amount of gold and liquid water to increase the same amount of temperature, you would need to pump 40 times the amount of heat into the water!
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Gold liquefies (turns from solid to liquid) at 1,064 deg C (1,946 deg F) and water at 100 deg C (212 deg F). The heat capacity of gold is 0.129 J/g deg C and for water it’s 4.148 J/g deg C. What that means is that water has absorbs 4.184 Joules of heat in order for 1 gram of water to increase 1 degree C, whereas for gold, it only has to absorb 0.129 Joules of heat before 1 gram of gold goes up 1 deg C. Water has a huge heat capacity!
Karis asks: So how does the heat capacity of gold and water relate to each other in terms of both the temperatures of their melting points and heat capacity?
Thanks for catching the video errors – they’ve been fixed!
This video is the same as the video from the previous lesson (https://www.sciencelearningspace2.com/2014/10/heat-capacity/). Is the repetition deliberate? Thanks!