Specific Heat

            The ability of water to stabilize temperature depends on its relatively high specific heat.  The specific heat of
a  substance is defined at the amount of heat that must be absorbed or lost for 1 g of that substance to change its
temperature by 1º C.   The specific heat of water is               1.00 cal/g ºC.  Compared with most other substances,
water has an unusually high specific heat.  For example, ethyl alcohol, the type in alcoholic beverages, has a specific
heat of 0.6 cal/g ºC.

            Because of the high specific heat of water relative to other materials, water will change its temperature less
when it absorbs or loses a given amount of heat. The reason you can burn your finger by touching the metal handle
of a pot on the stove when the water in the pot is still lukewarm is that the specific heat of water is ten times greater
than that of iron.  In other words, it will take only 0.1 cal to raise the temperature of 1 g of iron 1ºC.  Specific heat
can be thought of as a measure of how well a substance resists changing its temperature when it absorbs or releases
heat.  Water resists changing its temperature; when it does change its temperature, it absorbs or loses a relatively
large quantity of heat for each degree of change.

            We can trace water’s high specific heat, like many of its other properties, to hydrogen bonding.  Heat must
be absorbed in order to break hydrogen bonds, and heat is released when hydrogen bonds form.  A calorie of heat
causes a relatively small change in the temperature because must of the heat energy is used to disrupt hydrogen
bonds before the water molecules can begin moving faster.  And when the temperature of water drops slightly, many
additional hydrogen bonds form, releasing a considerable amount of energy in the form of heat.

            What is the relevance of water’s high specific heat to life on Earth?  By warming up only a few degrees, a
large body of water can absorb and store a huge amount of heat from the sun in the daytime and during summer.  At
night and during winter, the gradual cooling water can warm the air.  This is the reason coastal areas generally have
milder climates than inland regions.  The high specific heat of water also makes ocean temperatures quite stable,
creating a favorable environment for marine life.  Thus, because of its high specific heat, the water that covers most
of planet Earth keeps temperature fluctuations within limits that permit life.  Also, because organisms are made
primarily of water, they are more able to resist changes in their own temperatures than if they were made of a liquid
with a lower specific heat.

  Water is one of the few substances that are less dense as a solid than as a liquid.  While other materials contract
when they solidify, water expands.  The cause of this exotic behavior is, once again, hydrogen bonding.  At
temperatures above 4º C, water behaves like other liquids, expanding as it warms and contracting as it cools.  Water
begins to freeze when its molecules are no longer moving vigorously enough to break their hydrogen bonds.  As the
temperature reaches 0º C, the water becomes locked into a crystalline lattice, each water molecule bonded to the
maximum of four partners.  The hydrogen bonds keep the molecules far enough apart to make ice about 10% less
dense than liquid water at 4º C.  When ice absorbs enough heat for its temperature to increase to above 0º C,
hydrogen bonds between molecules are disrupted.  As the crystal collapses, the ice melts, and molecules are free to
slip closer together.  Water reaches it greatest density at 4º C and then begins to expand as the molecules move
faster. 

            The ability of ice to float because of the expansion of water as it solidifies is an important factor in the fitness
of the environment.  If ice sank, then eventually all ponds, lakes, and even the oceans would freeze solid, making
life as we know it impossible on Earth.  During summer, only the upper few inches of the ocean would
thaw.  Instead, when a deep body of water cools, the floating ice insulates the liquid water below, preventing it from
freezing and allowing life to exist under the frozen surface.

Thermal Electrical
Metal Specific Heat Density
Conductivity Conductivity
     cp           cal/g° k        watt/cm
    g/cm3 1E6/Ωm
C K
 Brass 0.09 1.09 8.5  
Iron 0.11 0.803 7.87 11.2
Nickel 0.106 0.905 8.9 14.6
Copper 0.093 3.98 8.95 60.7
Aluminum 0.217 2.37 2.7 37.7
Lead 0.0305 0.352 11.2  

Theory of heat capacity

[edit]Factors that affect specific heat capacity

Molecules undergo many characteristic internal vibrations. Potential energy stored in these internal degrees of freedom
contributes to a sample’s energy content, [9] [10] but not to its temperature. More internal degrees of freedom tend to increase
a substance's specific heat capacity, so long as temperatures are high enough to overcome quantum effects.

For any given substance, the heat capacity of a body is directly proportional to the amount of substance it
contains (measured in terms of mass or moles or volume). Doubling the amount of substance in a body
doubles its heat capacity, etc.

However, when this effect has been corrected for, by dividing the heat capacity by the quantity of
substance in a body, the resulting specific heat capacity is a function of the structure of the substance
itself. In particular, it depends on the number of degrees of freedom that are available to the particles in
the substance, each of which type of freedom allows substance particles to store thermal energy.
The kinetic energy of substance particles is the only one of the many possible degrees of freedom which
manifests astemperature change, and thus the larger the number of degrees of freedom available to the
particles of a substance other than kinetic energy, the larger will be the specific heat capacity for the
substance.

In addition, quantum effects require that whenever energy be stored in any mechanism associated with a
bound system which confers a degree of freedom, it must be stored in certain minimal-sized deposits
(quanta) of energy, or else not stored at all. Such effects limit the full ability of some degrees of freedom
to store energy when their lowest energy storage quantum amount is not easily supplied at the average
energy of particles at a given temperature. In general, for this reason, specific heat capacities tend to fall
at lower temperatures where the average thermal energy available to each particle degree of freedom is
smaller, and thermal energy storage begins to be limited by these quantum effects. Due to this process,
as temperature falls toward absolute zero, so also does heat capacity.