Question

I would like an explanation for the following answer:

Substances A–D have the following specific heats: Substance A: 900; Substance B: 170; Substance C: 270; Substance D: 4,180. Which substance would be the best for transferring heat in a heating or cooling system?

Substance A
Substance B
Substance C
Substance D <-- This is the correct answer.

Answer 1

My first guess was Substance B.

Answer 2

Specific heat is the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of a certain material by 1 degree, probably Celsius I'd imagine.

I'd imagine that if we want our material to transfer heat, then we would want our material to be able to pack as much heat as possible without heat loss and/or melting the material.

Answer 3

The way I think of it is, if we're trying to get as many people from city A to city B, we'll want a bigger train in order to pack more people to transfer between cities. Likewise, if we're trying to transfer heat from one area to another, we will want a material with a high specific heat capacity.

Here's another website that briefly touches up on the idea http://koolance.com/cooling101-heat-transfer

Answer 4

Thank you!