Heat Capacity
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Heat Capacity
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?
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Re: Heat Capacity
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.
Re: Heat Capacity
The heat capacity lets you calculate how much energy is gained by that specific amount of water depending on the temperature change.
Re: Heat Capacity
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.
Re: Heat Capacity
Sometimes we are not provided the mass of the substance so we cannot use specific heat capacity
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Re: Heat Capacity
The specific heat capacity depends on knowing the mass, heat capacity doesn't so we use that when we don't know the mass.
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Re: Heat Capacity
We cannot always use specific heat capacity because the mass is not always given in problems. It depends on the context of the problem!
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Re: Heat Capacity
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.
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Re: Heat Capacity
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.
Re: Heat Capacity
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
Re: Heat Capacity
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
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