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Relationship between Density and Specific heat Capacity


williamkrishock

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Hi everyone. I am doing my EE in physics. I wanted to nvestigate the relationship between density and specific heat capacity, using 5 different metals. I know that the relationship is inverse, but i would appreciate if you could explain why, in your own words. I know the answer i need and explanation, please help me!

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Hi everyone. I am doing my EE in physics. I wanted to nvestigate the relationship between density and specific heat capacity, using 5 different metals. I know that the relationship is inverse, but i would appreciate if you could explain why, in your own words. I know the answer i need and explanation, please help me!

 

Are you trying to find the relationship between specific heat capacity vs density within the same metal? If you are, then the derivation is pretty straight-foward:

  1. Let's consider a cube of a solid. Then the solid's mass can be calculated by the formula m = ρV (where 'm' stands for mass, 'ρ' stands for density, V stands for the volume of the cube)
  2. Substitute m = ρV into the equation Q = mcΔT, we'll get Q = ρVcΔT
  3. Since we're talking about the same amount of solid, we would want to keep Q to be constant. Therefore, 'ρ' and 'c' must be inversely proportional for Q to be the same.

Note that 'c' stands for specific heat capacity in my derivation above. If there's anything unclear, feel free to ask.

Edited by Vioh
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Thankyou so much! just to be clear, i want to calculate the SHC and the density of different metals, individually, and thus find a relationship in general between SHC and density. in my EE i will calculate these values for 5 different metals and plot a graph showing the relationship between SHC and Density. I am pretty sure this is what you explained but just to confirm.

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Hey, please discard all of my explanations above because i've figured out that my reasoning was a bit flawed up there. The reason is that in the equation 'Q = ρVcΔT', it's not true that 'ρ' and 'c' must be inversely proportional for Q to be the same, because 'ρ' & 'V' are already inversely proportional to each other. So that was so silly of me to reason it like that.

 

Therefore, I now begin to doubt whether density is inversely proportional to the specific heat capacity for real. However, you said:

 

I know that the relationship is inverse

 

so I'm wondering whether you can cite the source in which you've read about this? Because to be honest, I can't think of any reasons why there must be such a relationship.

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Hey, I guess I figured that out since I got the c of 10 metals and the density of the same metals and arranging them in a table I got a linear graph sloping down, hence I supposed the relationship was inverse. My teacher was also supprised by I guess it is like that. I am looking for bibliography on this but I cant find anything if you have anything please tell me.

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