What is the basic unit of heat in the metric system?

What is the basic unit of heat in the metric system?

• A. Joule
• B. BTU
• C. Calorie
• D. Coulomb

Answer: (C)

Heat is a form of energy, and in traditional metric usage the calorie has been the unit used to quantify that heat. A calorie is defined as the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree Celsius at standard atmospheric pressure. This makes it a practical reference for heat transfer in chemistry and physics problems. In modern practice, the SI unit of energy is the joule, and 1 calorie equals about 4.184 joules (so a joule is roughly 0.239 calories). The other options are not units of heat: BTU is a British energy unit, and Coulomb is a unit of electric charge.

Heat is a form of energy, and in traditional metric usage the calorie has been the unit used to quantify that heat. A calorie is defined as the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree Celsius at standard atmospheric pressure. This makes it a practical reference for heat transfer in chemistry and physics problems. In modern practice, the SI unit of energy is the joule, and 1 calorie equals about 4.184 joules (so a joule is roughly 0.239 calories). The other options are not units of heat: BTU is a British energy unit, and Coulomb is a unit of electric charge.