Measures of Heat. Temperature is a measure of the average translational kinetic energy of the molecules of a system. Heat is commonly expressed in either of two units: the calorie, an older metric unit, and the British thermal unit (Btu), an English unit commonly used in the United States. Scientists express heat in terms of the joule, a unit used for all forms of energy. As heat is added to a substance in the solid state, the molecules of the substance gain kinetic energy and the temperature of the substance rises. The amount of heat needed to raise a unit of mass of the substance one degree of temperature is called the specific heat of the substance.
By default, MATLABÂ® uses 16 digits of precision. For higher precision, use vpa. The default precision for vpa is 32 digits. Increase precision beyond 32 digits by using digits. Find pi using vpa, which uses the default 32 digits of precision. Confirm that the current precision is 32 by using digits.
MATLABÂ® provides a large number of functions that perform computational tasks. Functions are equivalent to subroutines or methods in other programming languages. To call a function, such as max, enclose its input arguments in parentheses: A = [1 3 5]; max(A) ans = 5.