Dividing Heat Capacity

[Michaela Polacca 1F]

Today during lecture Professor mentioned that if you "divide heat capacity by the amount of substance present then you have an intensive property called Specific Heat Capacity". He went on to mention that it is "much more useful" in this form. Why is heat capacity more useful in an intensive form?

[Crystal Eshraghi 2L]

From what I understood from lecture, heat capacity in its intensive form is more useful because it allows us to know the actual, specific amount of substance being dealt with. As an extensive property, however, we are not sure how "large" the object of interest actually is, and so our overall understanding of the system is not as comprehensive.

[Phoebe Hao 1J]

It is more useful in this form because when given specific quantities of substances in problems, we can find their heat by applying these values and the specific heat capacities to the equations q=mC_sdeltaT or q=nC_mdeltaT.