Heat Capacity

[Layal Suboh 1I]

Hello,

I'm confused about the difference between an extensive property and an intensive property.What is the significance of each?

[Searra Harding 4I]

Extensive properties are dependent on matter measured, like volume and mass. Intensive properties don't depend on amount of matter, like color or density.

[Ariel Cheng 2I]

To build on, heat capacity is therefore an extensive property because heat capacity is the heat required to raise the temperature of an object by 1 degree celsius. The heat required to raise the temperature of an object depends on how much of the object there is or the amount of substance.

[Cynthia Aragon 1B]

Intensive properties do not depend on the amount of matter present. Such examples include density, boiling point, melting point and temperature. They are useful in identifying a sample because the characteristics don't depend on the quantity of the sample and do not change according to conditions.
On the other hand, extensive properties do depend on the amount of matter present. Examples include: volume, size, mass, and weight.

One useful way to identify whether it is intensive or extensive property is to take two samples of the same substance and if it makes more (twice the mass or twice as long) then it is an extensive property. If the property does not change when you alter the sample size then it is an intensive property.

[Parth Mungra]

We want an intensive property because it can help us more with our specific experiments or reactions. We can divide the Heat capacity by the amount of substance in grams to get the specific heat capacity, which is an intensive property. We can also divide the heat capacity by the moles of substance to get molar heat capacity, which is also an intensive property.

[Laurence Tacderas 1K]

As people have said above, the fact that molar heat capacity is intensive, we can apply it to any similar reaction regardless of the number of moles reacted.