Heat capacity system. When expressing the same phenomenon as an intensive property, the heat capacity is divided by the amount of substance, mass, or volume, thus the quantity is independent of the size or extent of the sample. The molar heat capacity is the heat capacity per unit amount (SI unit: mole) of a pure substance, and the specific heat capacity, often called simply specific heat, is the heat capacity per unit mass of a material. Nonetheless some authors use the term specific heat to refer to the ratio of the specific heat capacity of a substance at any given temperature to
Action (physics) Action (physics) In physics, action is an attribute of the dynamics of a physical system from which the equations of motion of the system can be derived. It is a mathematical functional which takes the trajectory, also called "path" or "history", of the system as its argument and has a real number as its result. Generally, the action takes different values for different paths. Action has the dimensions of [energy]⋅[time] or [momentum]⋅[length], and its SI unit is joule-second. Hamilton's principle states that the differential equations of motion for "any" physical system can be re-formulated as an equivalent integral equation. Thus,