[time-nuts] Thunderbolt stability and ambient temperature

Rex rexa at sonic.net
Thu Jun 11 09:48:38 UTC 2009


Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:

>In message <4A309B30.7000400 at sonic.net>, Rex writes:
>
>  
>
>>My observation, from doing this 
>>several times, is that the cold water quickly absorbes heat from the red 
>>end, but also seems to chase a lot of the heat quickly up toward the 
>>cold end, making the bar rapidly uncomfortable to hold.
>>    
>>
>
>I've seen the effect you describe explained in an article somewhere,
>very likely New Scientist or SciAm about five years ago.
>
>When you rapidly heat or cool metals, very often changes in crystal
>lattice structure is involved some of them resulting in quite drastic
>changes to volume.
>
>Heat is essentially atoms wiggling about, and when you change the
>modes of freedom for the atoms, they may have to wiggle harder.
>
>  
>
Thanks, that sounds like the most likely explanation I have heard. If 
you find a more complete citation, I'd be interested to hear about it.




More information about the time-nuts mailing list