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Heat Capacity

Posted: Sun Jan 26, 2020 1:41 am
by Sofia Ban
What is the relationship between high/low heat capacity and overall transfer of energy?

Re: Heat Capacity

Posted: Sun Jan 26, 2020 9:42 am
by MinuChoi
Substances with higher heat capacity require more energy to raise its temperature and will have to expend more energy to cool down.
If you're referring to heat transfer between two substances, the substance with a higher heat capacity will experience a smaller change in temperature because more energy transfer is required to change its temperature.

Re: Heat Capacity

Posted: Sun Jan 26, 2020 10:42 am
by Bryce Ramirez 1J
Lower heat capacity means that the substance will easily heat and cool. Heat transfer will also easily happen when the value for the heat capacity is low.

Re: Heat Capacity

Posted: Sun Jan 26, 2020 12:52 pm
by chari_maya 3B
The book states that "The constant-volume and constant-pressure heat capacities of a solid substance are similar; the same is true of a liquid but not of a gas". Why is this not true for a gas?

Re: Heat Capacity

Posted: Sun Jan 26, 2020 4:22 pm
by Natalie Benitez 1E
How do we know the heat capacity also how does heat transfer of energy work?

Re: Heat Capacity

Posted: Sun Jan 26, 2020 4:34 pm
by MinuChoi
How do we know the heat capacity?


There's a formula for calculating it given heat and temperature (textbook p. 251). For specific heat capacities, those are unique for every substance.

Re: Heat Capacity

Posted: Sun Jan 26, 2020 4:45 pm
by Kavya Immadisetty 2B
High heat capacity means that more energy is taken to increase or decrease the overall temperature.

Re: Heat Capacity

Posted: Mon Jan 27, 2020 3:00 pm
by MariaJohn1D
chari_maya 3B wrote:The book states that "The constant-volume and constant-pressure heat capacities of a solid substance are similar; the same is true of a liquid but not of a gas". Why is this not true for a gas?


I'm curious about this as well because in lecture he said you need to specify these different heat capacities for gases only, but I didn't really understand why.