Question

Name the physical quantity which is measured in calories.

Answer 1

In order to solve this question, we should know that every physical quantity which is measurable in physics have some units which defines it’s amount and each kind of physical quantity have unique measurement units and their specific names, here we will discuss about the quantity which is measured in calories in brief.

Complete answer:
In physics, Energy is defined as the quantitative property which if given to the body it gains ability to perform work and the basic unit in which energy is measured was named after scientist Joule so, it’s basically measured in Joules.Calories is also a unit of energy and basic definition of Calories is defined as the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of a quantity of water by one degree Celsius of temperature.

So, Calories is a unit of heat energy and for example when we say a body has $100\,cal$ which is read as hundred calories it means body of hundred units of energy which is measured in units of calories.The basic relation between Joules and calories is related as $1\,cal = 4.184\,Joules$ which is read as one unit of calories is equal to $4.184$ units of joule.

Hence, the physical quantity which is measured in calories is heat energy.

Note: It should be remembered that, Both Joules and Calories are units of measurements of energy but energy itself is of many types such as potential energy, heat energy, sound energy, light energy and many mores. and all forms of energies have same in dimensional formula as $[M{L^2}{T^{ - 2}}].$