Heat Capacity [ENDORSED]

[Daniela Contreras 3E]

How can you tell which molecule has a higher heat capacity?

[Saitiel1]

The molecule with the highest conformational flexibility will have the highest heat capacity. In other words, the molecule with the highest number of conformational possibilities will have the highest heat capacity.

Hope this helps!

[Cynthia Bui 2H]

The more degrees of freedom a molecule has the higher its heat capacity.

[Jessica Nunez 1I]

The heat capacity increases with molecular complexity. As more atoms are present in the molecule, there are more possible bond vibrations that can absorb added energy.

[David Zhou 1L]

Intermolecular forces also play a large role in determining heat capacity; for example, water has a pretty high specific heat due to hydrogen bonding between the atoms. This is somewhat related to molecular complexity.

[Jacob Schwarz-Discussion 3I]

The more degrees of freedom a molecule has, the higher its heat capacity is.