What Is Specific Heat Capacity?
Specific heat capacity, c, is the heat needed to raise the temperature of 1 kg of a substance by 1 K: c = Q / (m ΔT). SI unit: J/(kg·K).
Two cases for gases: cV at constant volume and cP at constant pressure. They differ by the work the gas does against its surroundings; for an ideal gas, cP − cV = R.
Notable values: liquid water c ≈ 4186 J/(kg·K), unusually high — one reason oceans buffer climate. Aluminium c ≈ 900 J/(kg·K). Lead c ≈ 130 J/(kg·K). For solids the Dulong–Petit law gives 3R per mole at high temperature; quantum effects (Einstein, Debye) drop c below this at low temperature.
Recent research on this topic from arXiv
Preprints and papers indexed on arXiv.org. Links open the public abstract pages.
- Specific Heat Capacity of TiO2 Nanoparticles
M. Saeedian, M. Mahjour-Shafiei, E. Shojaee et al. · 2013 ·arXiv:1307.7555v1
We have calculated heat capacity of TiO2 nanoparticles in three stable polymorphs by applying size and surface effects on heat capacity of the bulk structure. The size and surface corrections were imposed on the acoustic and optical bulk ph... - Thermal diffusivity and specific heat capacity of linear alkylbenzene
Wenjie Wu, Guolei Zhu, Qingmin Zhang et al. · 2019 ·arXiv:1904.12147v1
We report the measurements of the thermal diffusivity and the isobaric specific heat capacity of linear alkylbenzene at about 23$\,^{\circ}\mathrm{C}$ with the standard atmosphere, which are measured for the first time. The conductivity, he... - Specific heat of robust Nb2PdS5 superconductor
Reena Goyal, Brajesh Tiwari, Rajveer Jha et al. · 2014 ·arXiv:1412.4890v4
We report specific heat under different magnetic fields for recently discovered quasi-one dimensional Nb2PdS5 superconductor. The studied compound is superconducting below 6 K. Nb2PdS5 is quite robust against magnetic field with dHc/dT of -... - Study on Unconventional Superconductors via Angle-resolved Specific Heat
Tuson Park, M. B. Salamon · 2004 ·arXiv:0411001v1
The gap function in unconventional superconductors may vanish at points or lines in momentum space, permitting electronic excitations, termed nodal quasiparticles, to exist at temperatures well below the superconducting transition. In the v...