What is the definition of specific heat?

Specific heat is defined as the amount of heat required to change the temperature of 1 gram of a substance by 1°C. This concept is crucial in understanding how different materials absorb and transfer heat. It indicates how much energy a material can store and how it responds to changes in temperature.

This definition helps in various applications, including calculating energy changes in thermal processes, understanding weather patterns, and engineering tasks involving heat transfer. Specific heat varies from one material to another, which explains why some substances heat up or cool down faster than others. For instance, water has a high specific heat, which means it can absorb a lot of heat without experiencing a significant temperature change, making it an excellent coolant and stabilizing agent in our environment.

The other choices do not accurately define specific heat. The total heat energy in a substance refers to its internal energy, the energy needed to vaporize a substance pertains to latent heat, and heat transfer through physical contact describes conduction, none of which capture the essence of specific heat.