Lesson 8: Heat Capacity and Chemical Bonding

The amount of energy released when a substance burns is called its heat capacity. Generally speaking, the heat capacity of a material is directly related to the number of chemical bonds – the more bonds a material has, the higher its heat capacity. Can you determine which substances have the greatest and least number of chemical bonds per gram?

Doing the science

1. You must have completed the seven previous lessons in this module before you complete this lesson.
2. Enter the heat capacity values you calculated for each material in the seven previous lessons in Table 1 below.
3. Rank the substances, giving the number "1" to the substance with the highest heat capacity and "7" to substance with the lowest. Enter your rankings in Table 1.