Thread: Specific heat capacity

The specific heat capacity of water is very high.......

How people who live on an island would experience this fact in terms of weather conditions??

What do u think????????

Substances with low specific heat such as metals require less input energy to increase their temperature. Substances with high specific heat such as water require much more energy to increase their temperature. The specific heat can also be interpreted as a measure of how well a substance preserves its temperature, i.e. "stores" heat, hence the term "heat capacity".

Quoted from Wikipedia

I think this information can help you think about your problem. If not, we will try to help.

The high specific heat of water and how much we have of it on our surface regulates our temperature. The islands experience their greatest climate controlling factors just like anywhere else, distance from the equator.

Planets and other bodies in space void of water experience extreme temperature fluctuations between day and night because water is not there to regulate (by trapping excess heat when it's warm and releasing this heat when it's cool).

SO.......

the island near the quarter will experience cloudy weather most of times because the sun provides enough energy to rise the temperature to the boiling point and opposite for anywhere else......

I think the question included island to point to the quantity of water and therefore the mass....Silkworm is also right in pointing to the location (i.e to provide the energy needed which is coming from the sun)....

I think the question is bad......


ANY COMMENTS

No the question is not bad. I think you did not understand silkworm's answer. The point is that the water surrounding an island acts like a big heat sink. It absorbs heat during hot weather and releases heat in cold weather keeping the temperature moderate. Therefore the weather of an island will experience must less extremes than a location far from any body of water. Deserts for example are well known to get very hot during the day, but what is less well known is how cold it can get during the night. This is because the heat capacity of the rock and sand in the desert is no where near as high as that of water.

A continental coastal area experience the same climate moderation but in this case you also get breezes that switches directions when the sun rises or sets as a result of the changing temperature differential between the land and the water.

Thank u mitchellmckain

It's clear now..........