Tagged Questions

2
votes
2answers
22 views

How would a change in ambient temp affect a radiator?

I'm curious if you have a radiator or say a block of metal (lets say it's copper since it has the highest thermal conductivity) and on one side is a processor producing heat. At idle the processor ...
0
votes
1answer
48 views

Time constant of ice melt

I'm familiar with problems of "how much ice can you melt given some amount of energy", but I'm writing to get some clarification on the time constant of this event. This question might be somewhat ...
6
votes
2answers
147 views

When should I take wine out of the fridge - transient heat transfer problem

I am hosting a dinner tonight for which I'll be serving white wine (Riesling to be more specific). Generally white wine is best served chilled (not COLD!) at around ...
3
votes
4answers
371 views

why does a larger thermal conductivity provide a smaller temperature gradient?

I was thinking about Fourier's Law in heat transfer today and for some reason I am just not understanding the relationships it gives us. Fourier's tells us that if the heat transfer rate is kept ...
8
votes
4answers
748 views

What happens when you heat vodka in a microwave?

Since ethanol has a lower dielectric constant than water would the water heat up and boil before the ethanol? Would the water transfer heat to the ethanol and, since ethanol has a lower boiling point, ...
-1
votes
1answer
165 views

At the atomic level, is heat conduction simply radiation?

Radiation and conduction are two ways that heat is transferred. Convection isn't really a mode of transfer as the actual heat transfer really occurs through radiation/conduction and not by some other ...
2
votes
0answers
32 views

In a non-degenerate plasma, why are e-e collision negligible compared to e-ion for thermal conduction?

I'm trying to make some order of magnitude estimates of heat transfer in stars - to better understand 1) why conduction is said to be negligible (for non-degenerate matter) and 2) when convection ...
-2
votes
1answer
222 views

Why do phonons cause excellent heat conduction in diamonds?

Phonons are the quantum of lattice vibrations in crystals and are not to be confused with photons, the gauge bosons of the electromagnetic force. Apparently, they contribute to heat conduction, but I ...
3
votes
1answer
302 views

Why do some metal containers not conduct heat, while some do?

Some metal containers such as the Nissan Thermos ones, even if 100 C water is filled inside, the container is still cold to the touch on the outside. It won't be even warm: At the same time, some ...
1
vote
1answer
366 views

Do materials cool down in the vacuum of space?

Do materials cool down in the vacuum of space? If yes, how does it really work?
0
votes
0answers
536 views

What is the insulative value of water?

I am having a hard to finding what the R value of water is. I am trying to compare it to styrofoam (which has an R-Value of 5). EDIT Based on the assumption that water has an insulative property, ...
1
vote
3answers
353 views

Maximum efficiency for a counter-current heat exchanger (double flux controlled motorized ventilation)

I am not sure if I can explain the question correctly because I don't know the name of this mechanism in English. This is my explanation attempt: In a house, a tube is expelling the air from the ...
3
votes
2answers
398 views

How fast is heat transferred by conduction?

How fast is heat transferred by conduction? Is there some simple, but quantitative way that starts from some properties of the material (e.g. its thermal conductivity) and makes rough predictions, for ...
1
vote
1answer
345 views

When a color LCD/LED display is off it is black, when on it is colored. What color to light is an LCD/LED display

When a modern display using pixels is turned on its colors are different than the black that the screen is actually made up of. When put in light, such as sunlight, does the screen react to the color ...
3
votes
2answers
533 views

Why is oil a poor conductor of heat?

Why is oil a poor conductor of heat? Does it help in insulation?
3
votes
1answer
775 views

Why is the lid of the cookware kept on induction cooker not hot?

Induction cookware cooks food by inducing an electro magnetic field in the ferro-magnetic cookware. Since iron offers a lot of resistance to the current, the current is converted into heat in the ...
1
vote
1answer
209 views

Per unit area, is there more heat transfer through the open top of a mug or the side walls?

I had a mug of hot coffee cool too rapidly for my liking the other day, which made me wonder what was the greater contributor to heat loss for a typical open-top ceramic mug: the open top, the walls, ...
2
votes
1answer
634 views

Confused with stress, strain and linear thermal expansion

Four rods A, B, C, D of same length and material but of different radii r, 2r , 3r and 4r respectively are held between two rigid walls. The temperature of all rods is increased by same ...
0
votes
1answer
137 views

Is this a simple system in which no heat transfer is possible?

Let's say that a hot gas is trapped in a metal box. This metal box is magnetically suspended in another structure with a low temperature. The inner box does not touch anything. And there is a void in ...
2
votes
1answer
133 views

Optical element is heated by laser: is it possible to get oscillating heat distribution?

Imagine that we have thin optical element, which is irradiated by laser. Laser heats element, so there is some heat distribution in element. There is a heat sink through upper and lower element faces ...
2
votes
3answers
366 views

Finite difference formulation of the heat equation with thermal conductivity in 1D

This may seem trivial, but I'm having some trouble deriving the finite difference form of the heat equation with a thermal conductivity function $a(x)$ depending on $x$: $$\frac{\partial u(x, ...