Regular heat capacity: why?
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Regular heat capacity: why?
If heat capacity is an extensive property, is there any point in using it? Why would we need to know/consider it when specific heat capacity is fare more useful?
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Re: Regular heat capacity: why?
I think one of the points of heat capacity is that you don't always want to know how much energy it takes to raise only one gram by one degree Celsius. Sometimes you have different amounts of a substance. I agree that specific heat capacity is more useful, but sometimes you might need to find out the general heat capacity of a larger or smaller amount of substance. Like if you wanted to know how much energy to raise the temp of a kettle of water.
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Re: Regular heat capacity: why?
I guess that heat capacity will just give you quick information about the energy needed to raise a specific amount of substance, but I do agree that specific heat capacity is more useful in that it could just calculate the heat capacity of that amount of a substance anyway.
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Re: Regular heat capacity: why?
Specific heat capacity is an intensive property. You'll get the specific heat capacity if you divide heat capacity by the amount of substance present (g), so it is a more useful property for calculations.
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Re: Regular heat capacity: why?
Sometimes if you are calculating the total energy transfer, you would need to calculate heat capacity from specific heat, by multiplying by the amount of substance, so it could be useful to have the heat capacity for the amount of substance you have in the first place.
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