How many calories per gram are contained in marshmallows? Introduction Food is the primary source of energy for all living organisms - it is used to replenish and supply energy to the body and provide the nutrients it needs to grow and thrive. In 1824, Nicolas Clement came up with the term “calorie” as a unit of heat energy (Calorie n.d.). In modern day, calories are often associated with food because the number of calories in food is the measure of how much potential energy that food contains (Painter 2006). The Law of Conservation of Energy states that the total amount of energy in an isolated system remains constant; no energy can be gained or lost, however, it can be transferred from one form to another (Tuckerman n.d.). …show more content…
This is known as specific heat capacity; it measures the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of that particular substance by 1 degree Celsius. Specific heat capacity was first discovered in the 18th century by a Scottish scientist by the name of Joseph Black who noticed that different substances of equal masses required distinctive amounts of heat to raise them to similar temperature intervals (Encyclopædia Britannica 2014). The specific heat capacity of water is 4.184 J/g°C. Energy is most commonly measured joules (J) or kilojoules (kJ) during the study of heat transfer between two substances (Tuckerman n.d.); however, there is another measurement for energy which is used to measure the amount of energy in food, and this is referred to as food calories. Food calories are equal to 1000 heat calories and 1 heat calorie is equal to 4.184 joules (Calories in Food – A Factor in Weight Maintenance and Weight Loss n.d.). Consequently, it can be seen that the specific heat of a substance can also be measured in calories. Therefore, the specific heat capacity of water can also be written as 1 cal/g°C. In this lab, the calculations were done using food calories and heat calories in order to determine the caloric content of one marshmallow per