Fish Nutrition & Feed Technology

Unit 8 - Energy

8.3.Energy units

Energy is usually expressed in terms of heat units, since all forms of energy are convertible into heat energy. The basic heat unit normally used is the calorie. One calorie is defined as the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree centigrade. Since for many purposes the calorie (cal) is too small a unit of measurement, the kilocalorie (kcal) is often used; 1 kcal = 1000 cal. In many scientific studies the calorie is now being replaced by the joule (J) as the unit of energy; 4.184 J = 1 cal.