heat capacity
Noun
Meaning
heat capacity (plural heat capacities)
(physics) The capability of a system to absorb heat energy; the amount of thermal energy required to raise the temperature of a system by one temperature unit without any change of phase.
500 J introduced to a system caused the temperature of the system to increase by 2 K; thus, the heat capacity is 250 J/K. If the system consists of a single material with a mass of 500 g, the specific heat capacity of that material is 500 J/K/kg.
Examples
As superconducting vanadium is warmed toward its critical temperature, its heat capacity increases massively in a very few degrees; this suggests an energy gap being bridged by thermal energy.
Another example is gasoline (see table showing its specific heat capacity).
Another way of stating this, is that the volume-specific heat capacity (volumetric heat capacity) of solid elements is roughly a constant.
Eventually (see the discussion in heat capacity ) it became clear that heat capacities per particle for all substances in all states are the same, to within a factor of two, so long as temperatures are not in the cryogenic range.
For all of these usages of 'latent heat', a more systematic terminology uses 'latent heat capacity'.
For a practical example, milk heats slightly faster than water in a microwave oven, but only because milk solids have less heat capacity than the water they replace.