Notation and Units
As a form of energy heat has the unit joule (J) in the International System of Units (SI). However, in many applied fields in engineering the British Thermal Unit (BTU) and the calorie are often used. The standard unit for the rate of heat transferred is the watt (W), defined as joules per second.
The total amount of energy transferred as heat is conventionally written as Q for algebraic purposes. Heat released by a system into its surroundings is by convention a negative quantity (Q < 0); when a system absorbs heat from its surroundings, it is positive (Q > 0). Heat transfer rate, or heat flow per unit time, is denoted by . This should not be confused with a time derivative of a function of state (which can also be written with the dot notation) since heat is not a function of state. Heat flux is defined as rate of heat transfer per unit cross-sectional area, resulting in the unit watts per square metre.
Read more about this topic: Heat
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