Thursday, May 18, 2006

Specific heat capacity

Specific heat capacity is the amount of energy needed to make the temperature of 1 kg of water go up by 1 Kelvin.

Note that the size of 1 Kelvin is actually the same as 1 Celsius. Temperature changes are the same whether they are measured in Celsius or kelvin.

So in specific heat capacity questions you don't need to change the temperatures into Kelvin.

The formula is on the data sheet.

They will either give you the specific heat capacity in the question or give you enough data to calculate it.