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, what we did this week was 2 experiments- the first of which was a test if whether the color of the container of a fluid had an impact on the rate of cooling of the fluid it encloses. 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 through the walls- the color of the containers do not really factor in.

The second part of the experiment was basically comparing the effect of color of the container of a fluid on the rate of heating of the enclosed fluid. We used a lamp for this part to induce heat transfer by radiation. As contrasted 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 and the graduated cylinder was quite nice since these tools remind me of Chem 16 days.