Heating Things Up.

Most recent answer: 10/22/2007

Q:
What is specific heat of a substance ?
- Varun Rathi (age 11)
Sri Sathya Sai School, Indore, MP, India
A:
The specific heat of a substance tells you how much heat is required to raise the temperature of the substance by a certain amount. If a substance has a large specific heat, this means you need to put in lots of energy to raise its temperature.

To find the specific heat of something, you need to do the following experiment. Take 1 gram of the substance and add heat to it until its temperature has increased by 1 degree C. The amount of energy this takes tells you the specific heat.

Adam

(published on 10/22/2007)