Heat capacity properties are often prefixed with the term "specific". International standards now recommend that specific heat capacity always refer to division by mass. The units for the specific heat capacity are formula_7. In chemistry, heat capacity is often specified relative to one mole, the unit of amount of substance, and is called the molar heat capacity. It has the unit formula_8. For some considerations it is useful to specify the volume-specific heat capacity, commonly called volumetric heat capacity, which is the heat capacity per unit volume and has SI units formula_9. This is used almost exclusively for liquids and solids, since
Defining equation (physics) of measurements to be made when they might appear ambiguous and unclear otherwise. A basic example is mass density. It is not clear how compare how much matter constitutes a variety of substances given only their masses or only their volumes. Given both for each substance, the mass "m" per unit volume "V", or mass density "ρ" provides a meaningful comparison between the substances, since for each, a fixed amount of volume will correspond to an amount of mass depending on the substance. To illustrate this; if two substances A and B have masses "m" and "m" respectively, occupying volumes