Heat!

      I'm back! It's Ion_Turtle again and it's time to talk about heat. No I don't mean the heat levels in need for speed.  I mean actually heat in real life. Heat is energy that is going from one object to another. It always goes from the hotter one to the colder one. This keeps you warm but more importantly keeps you alive! Heat affects almost everything in your life. It cooks your food, keeps your nice and warm in winter, and lights up the entire world! Except at night time.


Heat is transferred in three ways: conduction, radiation, and convection. Conduction is when energy is transferred between two objects (or the same object) when they touch. This can be observed when you lean a metal spoon on a hot pot. The heat from the pot will move to the spoon making it really hot. When you touch the spoon the heat will move to your hand burning you. Also only a small part of the spoon is touching the pot, but the molecules of the spoon are touching each other. Because they are touching each other the heat moves from one to the other.


The second one is radiation. Radiation is when energy is transferred by electromagnetic waves. The sun does this and so does fire. The electromagnetic waves can go through empty space. Radiation heat up the entire earth!

Convection is the last way heat transferred. In this way heat is transferred by the actual particles moving to somewhere else taking the heat with them. This creates convection currents. Because the particles have to move this only happens in liquids and gasses. This creates a circular current because the heat rises pushing the cold upper air down. Then the air that went down heats up and rises. This creates a circle. This is also how wind works.


There are also things called conductors and insulators (like in electricity). Conductors are substances that easily allow heat to pass through it. This would be like a metal spoon. Insulators don't allow heat to move through them easily. This would be like rubber. A good insulator's atoms are very disorderly placed and aren't very close. This makes it much harder for them to transfer their heat to the other atoms. While in good conductors the atoms are very orderly and tightly pachid like in metals.


The red arows are hot and the blue ones are cold. As you can see the structure keeps them seperated because it is a good insulator.

This may have made you think about your house. In your house you have heating and cooling vent. Usually the heating vents are on the floor while cooling vents are on the ceiling. This helps create the cunvection current we talked about earlier. Because of that it makes the room a much more unified temperature instead of half the room being hot and half freezing cold.

Ten facts about heat:

1. The highest temperature ever recorded in the shade was 57.8C (136F) in Libya on September 13 1922.

2. The skin of a polar bear is black, which helps it to absorb more of the heat from the sun.

3. According to Nasa, when the temperature reaches 95F our work output drops by 45 per cent.

4. “As cool as a cucumber” is an apt simile: The inside of a cucumber can be as much as 11C (20F) cooler than the outside temperature.

5. The average temperature on Mars is -63C.

6. According to ‘Dolbear’s Law', you can calculate the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit by counting the number of chirps produced in 14 seconds by the snowy tree cricket and adding 40.         

7. Until they are needed, the balls at Wimbledon are stored in refrigerated containers at 68F.

8. The flapping of the wings of 1,000 bees generates seven watts of heat.

9. The first use of the term “heatwave” for a period of hot weather was in New York in 1892.

10. The World Meteorological Organization’s definition of a heatwave is when temperatures are over 5C (9F) above average for five days in a row.

Bonus: The first use of the term “heatwave” for a period of hot weather was in New York in 1892

Links:
World spinning
Conduction gif
Sun gif
Convection gif
Conductors info.
Insulators gif