Man, if I could get 100% of my students to understand that distinction, I would feel like my themochemistry units were fairly successful.
Yeah, there are other details here and there, but really, that's a pretty big idea right there. Heat and temperature are not the same thing.
Serious Eats just put out a cookbook under their The Food Lab label, and one of the introductory chapters - specifically the one dealing with this heat/temperature distinction - is available for free online.
They, of course, focus on what that distinction means for cooking...
The article goes through the methods of heat transfer: radiation, convection, and conduction.
They also discuss some differences in cooking vessel material, specific heat and heat capacity, and relevant reference temps (for freezing, boiling, and germ killing). Plus they describe an experiment to show the difference in energy transfer rates between water convection (a pot of cold water heating to boiling) and air convection (a 200 Fahrenheit oven), both of which are tested with your hand and a thermometer.
From the article's finale...
To sum up:
- At a given temperature, denser materials generally contain more energy, and so heavier pans will cook food faster. (Conversely, it takes more energy to raise denser materials to a certain temperature.)
- At a given temperature, materials with a higher specific heat capacity will contain more energy. (Conversely, the higher the specific heat capacity of a material, the more energy it takes to bring it to a certain temperature.)
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