Introduction

Heat is energy that flows from one body to another because of a temperature difference between them.  The specific heat of a substance is a measure of the amount of heat (energy) needed to raise the temperature of a unit mass of the substance by 1 °C. It is sometimes called specific heat capacity. Therefore, if heat Q leads to a temperature change DT of an amount of mass m, the specific heat, c, is

For example, water has a specific heat of (4.184 ± 0.002) ´ 10³ J/kg×°C. In terms of the non-SI heat unit of calorie, the specific heat of water is 1 calorie/g×°C , which allows the specific heats of other substances to be easily compared to that of water. The specific heat of water is unusually large compared to most other substances, which is a subject of recent research interest.

The calorimeter (a container used in measuring quantities of heat exchange) is made of aluminum, whose specific heat can be found in the appendix on constants & conversions. 

The measurement of heat transfers is accomplished by "the method of mixtures".  By this method, two bodies initially at different temperatures are placed in thermal contact in a calorimeter. Heat is transferred between the bodies until some intermediate equilibrium temperature is reached.  Experimentally this is done by dropping a heated substance (in this experiment it is copper) into cool water and allowing thermal equilibrium to be reached. Thus the heat transferred, Q, is given by:

This assumes that no heat is exchanged with the surroundings (i.e. the air in the room), which is an unrealistic  assumption  In this experiment, if the water and the container are initially as much below room temperature as the final equilibrium temperature is above it, then heat lost to the room will approximately equal heat absorbed from it. This will minimize the error due to the idealistic assumption.