Although the chemistry of solid metals isn't so heavy on the MCAT, I come back to the rule of Dulong and Petit in the videos and questions at WikiPremed, that metals, regardless of atomic weight, have approximately the same molar heat capacity. I think it's a good rule to help you distinguish specific heat and molar heat capacity in the basic sense for problem solving, and in a more advanced sense, in that the relationship between temperature change and heat flow fundamentally has to do with the nature of the particles, their translational and rotational degrees of freedom, than their mass in themselves, which is why solid metals, where the metal atoms occupy lattice points in close packed crystalline solids, have approximately the same molar heat capacity. The metal atoms have roughly the same ways to move about, translation and vibration within the metallic electron sea shared between atoms, the same 'degrees of freedom' so the the heat flow is divided up among the modes of kinetic energy similarly. The most simple example of this you can see with ideal gases, where they all have the same molar heat capacity, 3/2 R, because the particles can move in the same ways, x,y, and z translational motion, but the specific heat may be different. This is a favorite MCAT distinction and crucial to understanding the kinetic theory of gasses. Cheers.
