Heat Capacity

[samanthaywu]

Why is it useful to have the heat capacity for something like water when it's dependent on the amount of water you have? Why don't we just have specific heat capacities of everything?

[Sydney Lam_2I]

Hi! I think that the reason we use heat capacity rather than specific heat capacity some times is when we don't know the actual amount of the substance but still want to calculate the entropy.

[705383815]

The heat capacity lets you calculate how much energy is gained by that specific amount of water depending on the temperature change.

[David Y]

Yes it allows varied temperatures to be used in the equation to find heat, not just one singular temperature unless it is specific heat capacity.

[Jamie2002]

Sometimes we are not provided the mass of the substance so we cannot use specific heat capacity

[Sarah Salam 1J]

The specific heat capacity depends on knowing the mass, heat capacity doesn't so we use that when we don't know the mass.

[Anastasia Yulo 1C]

We cannot always use specific heat capacity because the mass is not always given in problems. It depends on the context of the problem!

[Lorena_Morales_1K]

Heat capacity is the amount of heat energy required to raise the temperature of a body a specified amount. In SI units, heat capacity (symbol: C) is the amount of heat in joules required to raise the temperature 1 Kelvin.

[Arjun_Anumula_3E]

Because it allows us to still perform calculations on the energy change within a system without having to know the specific amounts of moles or reaction equations. Take the first question from the week 3 discussion section. All we have to know is the heat capacity (in this case calculating it from a previous calorimeter reaction) and the temperature change to find q. It allows for a simpler calculation of q without having to know the equation and doing stoichiometry and all that.

[Om Patel]

it will give an indication of how much energy will be required to heat or cool an object of a given mass by a given amount

[Om Patel]

it will give an indication of how much energy will be required to heat or cool an object of a given mass by a given amount