On Heat Transfer

The last experiment of Physics 103.1 was all about heat transfer, particularly the three processes involved: conduction, convection and radiation. Basically, we did two experiments, the first of which was a test to see if the color of the container of a fluid would have an impact on the rate of cooling of the enclosed fluid. For this part, we compared black and white bottles. The patterns we obtained for both bottles were more or less the same: both were exponential functions with approximately the same slope. This agrees with theoretical knowledge since heat transfer in the set-up was through conduction via the walls. The color of the containers do not really factor in.

In the second part of the experiment, we looked at the effect of the color of a fluid's container on the rate of heating of the enclosed fluid. We used a lamp to induce heat transfer by radiation. In contrast to the graph of cooling, the graph of heating was a straight line.

This last experiment was quite short, similar to the other thermo experiments. Dealing with the bottles was quite nice since the tools remind me of Chem 16 days.