Specific Heat Calculator

This specific heat calculator is a tool that determines the heat capacity of a heated or a cooled sample. Specific heat is the amount of thermal energy you need to supply to a sample weighing 1 kg to increase its temperature by 1 K. Read on to learn how to apply the heat capacity formula correctly to obtain a valid result.

Prefer watching over reading? Learn all you need in 90 seconds with this video we made for you:

1. Determine whether you want to warm up the sample (give it some thermal energy) or cool it down (take some thermal energy away).

2. Insert the amount of energy supplied as a positive value. If you want to cool down the sample, insert the subtracted energy as a negative value. For example, say that we want to reduce the sample's thermal energy by 63,000 J. Then $Q = -63,\!000 \ \text{J}$.

3. Decide the temperature difference between the initial and final state of the sample and type it into the heat capacity calculator. If the sample is cooled down, the difference will be negative, and if warmed up - positive. Let's say we want to cool the sample down by 3 degrees. Then $\Delta T = -3 \ \text{K}$. You can also select the Show initial and final temperatures checkbox to type the initial and final values of temperature manually.

4. Determine the mass of the sample. We will assume $m = 5 \ \text{kg}$.

5. Calculate specific heat as $c = \frac{Q}{m \Delta T}$. In our example, it will be equal to:

   $c = \mathrm{\frac{-63,000 \ J}{5 \ kg \cdot \ -3 \ K}} = \mathrm{4,\!200 \ \frac{J}{kg \cdot K}}$

   This is the typical heat capacity of water.

The formula for specific heat looks like this:

$Q$ is the amount of supplied or subtracted heat (in joules), $m$ is the mass of the sample, and $\Delta T$ is the difference between the initial and final temperatures. Heat capacity is measured in J/(kg·K).

You don't need to use the heat capacity calculator for most common substances. The values of specific heat for some of the most popular ones are listed below.

• Ice: $\mathrm{2,\!100 \ {J}/{kg\! \cdot\! K}}$
• Water: $\mathrm{4,\!200 \ {J}/{kg\! \cdot\! K}}$
• Water vapor: $\mathrm{2,\!000 \ {J}/{kg\! \cdot\! K}}$
• Basalt: $\mathrm{840 \ {J}/{kg\! \cdot\! K}}$
• Granite: $\mathrm{790 \ {J}/{kg\! \cdot\! K}}$
• Aluminum: $\mathrm{890 \ {J}/{kg\! \cdot\! K}}$
• Iron: $\mathrm{450 \ {J}/{kg\! \cdot\! K}}$
• Copper: $\mathrm{380 \ {J}/{kg\! \cdot\! K}}$
• Lead: $\mathrm{130 \ {J}/{kg\! \cdot\! K}}$

Having this information, you can also calculate how much energy you need to supply to a sample to increase or decrease its temperature. For instance, you can check how much heat you need to bring a pot of water to a boil to cook some pasta. Or, you can use the water heating calculator for convenience, where all this information was already taken into account for you.

Wondering what the result actually means? Try our potential energy calculator to check how high you would raise the sample with this amount of energy. Or check how fast the sample could move with this kinetic energy calculator.