Specific Heat Capacity Water has a very high specific heat capacity compared to other substances, as you already know. The information on this page is covered in Science 9. Specific heat capacity: The amount of heat energy (in joules) needed to raise the temperature of one kilogram of a substance by 1 degree Celsius. What this means is that water can take a lot of heat from the environment, and store it. The more heat that is required to raise the temperature a certain amount, the more energy gets stored by the molecules of that substance. In the case of water, that amount of heat is very high... a kilogram of it it sucks up a lot of heat energy while having its temperature raised just one degree. . You can calculate how much heat energy water stores when heated, using the formula for specific heat capacity: Here, c is the specific heat capacity of a substance. You can find c by entering the value of the heat Q needed to raise the temperature of m kilograms of that substance by delta T, which is the temperature rise. (You may be more familiar with the symbol E for the supplied heat energy.) For convenience (using small amounts of a substance), you can also measure the specific heat capacity per gram of the material. Then the formula measures how much heat is needed to raise one gram of the material one degree in temperature. The units for c are J / g °C Using these units, the value of c for liquid water is 4.19 J/g°C Knowing this value, you can use it to calculate various things. For example, how much the temperature will rise in a container of water, if you apply a known quantity of heat. Suppose you want to heat 500 g of water using 10,000 J of energy. The water starts at room temperature, 22°C. What will its final temperature be? The calculation is at the right. Notice that we began by reaaranging the formula, so that it would represent the difference in temperature. Filling in the values gives a result of about 4.8°C Since the initial temperature was 22°C, the final temperature will be 26.8°C Water Resources