Scoville scale Scoville scale The Scoville scale is a measurement of the pungency (spiciness or "heat") of chili peppers and other spicy foods, as recorded in Scoville Heat Units (SHU) based on the concentration of capsaicinoids, among which capsaicin is the predominant component. The scale is named after its creator, American pharmacist Wilbur Scoville, whose 1912 method is known as the Scoville organoleptic test. In the 21st century, high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) is used to quantify the capsaicinoid content as an indicator of pungency. The most expedient method for estimating SHU is a subjective assessment derived from the capsaicinoid sensitivity by people
Scale of temperature and has simple relation with microscopic quantities like the average kinetic energy of particles (see equipartition theorem). In experiments ITS-90 is used to approximate thermodynamic scale due to simpler realization. Lord Kelvin devised the thermodynamic scale based on the efficiency of heat engines as shown below: The efficiency of an engine is the work divided by the heat introduced to the system or where w is the work done per cycle. Thus, the efficiency depends only on q/q. Because of Carnot theorem, any reversible heat engine operating between temperatures "T" and "T" must have the same efficiency, meaning, the efficiency