Science: Is a material with a higher or lower specific heat (capacity) better for builiding a house?

Question

What kind of material is best for builiding a house in a hot climate? (Material with high specific heat capacity or low specific heat capacity)

Answer 1

I would guess higher because spec heat cap is that amount of energy required to raise the temp of something so something that reuires more heat/energy to heat it would insulate better

Answer 2

Higher heat capacity materials are preferred in in temperate climates. This is due to the fact that the higher the heat capacity, the more thermal energy it takes to raise a given volume of material to a specific higher temperature, and therefore more energy will be driven into the material during, say, a heating cycle. For example imagine a home in winter with a concrete floor lit by sunlight during the day in a room where there are windows on the south. As the sun heats the floor (the darker the color of the concrete the better, but that is another topic) it will heat up at a rate related to its heat capacity. More slowly for high heat capacity materials than low heat capacity materials. The material will quit heating up when the rate of emitting thermal energy equals the rate that enrgy is being absorbed for the sun. Since the rate that heat is given off is related to the surface temperature, the material that heats more slowly will absorb heat than materials that heat quickly. Then during the night, the heat absorbed will be released back into the room, and more heat to give is better.

Answer 3

A material with lower heat capacity is better for hot conditions because the house will get hot in the day (may the heat capacity be high or low) because it is a lot of time but a house with lower heat capacity will cool down much faster when the sun sets down.

Answer 4

Heat capacity is defined as the amount of heat neccessary to raise the temperature by one degree per unit mass of the substance...specific heat is the heat of the substance relative to the heat capacity of water (usually taken as 1)....the higher the heat capacity of the substance the higher the temperature need to raise by one degree per unit mass...meaning it has better insulating property...however, select the building material that has higher tensile and compressive strength to higher resistance from natural desasters.

Answer 5

That's not a very meaningful criterion. A good design likely uses both. In some places you want low thermal conductivity and you don't care about specific heat. You build differently if it's a desert that cools off at night.

Answer 6

This is not true. Copper and SS have almost the same specific heat. Yet copper has ten times the thermal conductivity of SS.

Answer 7

high specific heat becuase you want it to have more tolerance towards heat