Some Preliminary Observations on Heat Capacity

Heat capacity can be defined as the amount of energy required to increase the temperature of a material by 1 degree Kelvin or Celsius. Thus, 

AT = the change in temperature Q = amount of heat required to achieve AT. 

it would be considered that this is the heat stored in the molecular motions available to the material, that is the vibrational, translational motions etc. It is stored reversibly. Thus, the heat given out by the sample 

This is intuitively obvious. Clearly, if one wishes to increase the temperature of the material twice as fast, twice the amount of energy per unit time must be supplied. If the sample has twice the heat capacity, this also doubles the amount of heat required per unit time for a given rate of temperature rise. Considering a linear temperature programme, such as is usually employed in scanning calorimetry 

This provides one way of measuring heat capacity in a linear rising temperature experiment one simply divides the heatflow by the heating rate. If the temperature programme is replaced by one comprising a linear temperature ramp modulated by a sine wave, this can be expressed as 

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