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Calorie (Nutritional) (4,186 J)
A calorie is a unit of energy. Various definitions exist but fall into two broad categories. The first, the small calorie, or gram calorie (symbol: cal), is defined as the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree Celsius at a pressure of one atmosphere. The second, the large calorie or kilogram calorie (symbols: Cal, kcal), also known as the food calorie and similar names, is defined in terms of the kilogram rather than the gram. It is equal to 1000 small calories or 1 kilocalorie (symbol: kcal). In a nutritional context, the kilojoule (kJ) is the SI unit of food energy, although the kilocalorie is still in common use. The word calorie is popularly used with the number of kilocalories of nutritional energy measured. As if to avoid confusion, it is sometimes written Calorie (with a capital "C") in an attempt to make the distinction, although this is not widely understood. Capitalization contravenes the rule that the initial letter of a unit name or its derivative shall be lower case in English.
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Calorie (Thermochemical) (4.19 J)
A calorie is a unit of energy. Various definitions exist but fall into two broad categories. The first, the small calorie, or gram calorie (symbol: cal), is defined as the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree Celsius at a pressure of one atmosphere. The second, the large calorie or kilogram calorie (symbols: Cal, kcal), also known as the food calorie and similar names, is defined in terms of the kilogram rather than the gram. It is equal to 1000 small calories or 1 kilocalorie (symbol: kcal). In other scientific contexts, the term calorie almost always refers to the small calorie. Even though it is not an SI unit, it is still used in chemistry. For example, the energy released in a chemical reaction per mole of reagent is occasionally expressed in kilocalories per mole. Typically, this use was largely due to the ease with which it could be calculated in laboratory reactions, especially in aqueous solution: a volume of reagent dissolved in water forming a solution, with concentration expressed in moles per liter (1 liter weighing 1 kg), will induce a temperature change in degrees Celsius in the total volume of water solvent, and these quantities (volume, molar concentration and temperature change) can then be used to calculate energy per mole. It is also occasionally used to specify energy quantities that relate to reaction energy, such as enthalpy of formation and the size of activation barriers. However, its use is being superseded by the SI unit, the joule, and multiples thereof such as the kilojoule.