Recall, the specific heat capacity (c) of a substance, commonly called its “specific heat,” is thequantity of heat required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of a substance by 1 degree Celsius(or 1 kelvin). Mathematically, we compute the specific heat of a substance using the followingequation:C =qMATIn this equation, q is the absorbed heat, m is the mass of the substances, and AT is the change intemperature.Specific heat is an intensive property meaning that it depends on the type of substance and notthe amount. Liquid water has a relatively high heat capacity (4.184 J/g.C) in contrast to that ofmost metals whose heat capacities are often less than 1 J/g.C. This is explains why it doesn’ttake long for a saucepan to become hot, but the water takes much longer to start boiling. Thetable below lists the heat capacities of some commonly encounter substances.SubstanceSymbol (State) Specific Heat (J/g.C)WaterH20(1)4.184AluminumAl(s)0.897IronFe(s)0.449CopperCu(s)0.385GoldAu(s)0.129
