In the previous visual we used water.  Would we have got the same results with other substances?

We know, for example, that when we put a metal spoon into a plate of hot soup its temperature quickly rises, something which doesn't happen if it is a wooden spoon.  This observation and others like it led to a characteristic magnitude of a body being defined according to its nature, specific heat.

Specific heat is the necessary energy that the unit mass of a body needs to exchange with the environment in order to vary its temperature by one degree; its units are j/kg oC in the Système International, although in the laboratory it is more usual to use calorie/gºC , where calorie is the heat necessary to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree.

In the following visual we compare heating water with heating ethyl alcohol.