Coffee with hot milk but without hot water compared to coffee with 75% hot milk and 25% hot water. Seems the latter retains more heat. Note: Final beverage quantity of both cases are same and also assume milk and water having same temperature while making beverage.
In: Physics
Others have provided answers centering on specific heat capacity, which function to confirm your observation and give what you observed its established name. But these answer’s don’t explain, they just give a name.
Water has such a high specific heat capacity because of its molecular composition and structure.
1. There are 2 hydrogen atoms per molecule, and the hydrogen bonds are particularly strong, requiring a lot of energy to break and thus being able to store a lot of energy
2. The structure of the water molecule also boosts its storage capacity. The single oxygen molecule has two protons on one side, and two electron on the other side, and this makes the molecule polar (a difference in electrical charge from one side to the other), with a four-square, or tetrahedral structure. This optimizes the storage capacity of the hydrogen bonds discussed above.
As others have pointed out, milk is *mostly* water, but about 10% of milk is various compounds – fats, proteins, carbohydrates, each of which don’t store heat as effectively as water does. This lowers the specific heat capacity of milk when compared to water.
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