Lämpöäkyky

Lämpöäkyky, known in English as heat capacity, is a fundamental thermodynamic property of a substance. It quantifies the amount of heat energy required to raise the temperature of a given amount of that substance by one degree Celsius or Kelvin. Essentially, it describes how well a material can store thermal energy.

The unit of heat capacity is typically joules per Kelvin (J/K). It is important to distinguish heat capacity from specific heat capacity. Specific heat capacity, often denoted by a lowercase 'c', refers to the heat capacity of a unit mass of a substance, usually one gram or one kilogram. Therefore, specific heat capacity has units of joules per kilogram per Kelvin (J/kg·K) or joules per gram per Kelvin (J/g·K).

Different substances have vastly different heat capacities. For example, water has a remarkably high specific heat capacity compared to most other common materials. This means that it takes a significant amount of energy to heat water, and conversely, water releases a large amount of energy as it cools. This property plays a crucial role in regulating Earth's climate and in many industrial and biological processes.

Factors influencing heat capacity include the substance's chemical composition, its physical state (solid, liquid, or gas), and its molecular structure. Understanding heat capacity is essential in fields such as engineering, physics, and chemistry for designing systems that involve heating or cooling, predicting temperature changes, and analyzing energy transfer.