How Does Conduction Work?
Conduction is the transfer of thermal energy between material that comes into direct contact with each other.conduction It is the most common form of heat transfer and occurs every time you put a pan on the stove or when you touch your metal spoon to a boiling pot of water.conduction Conduction happens at the molecular level, causing particles of one material to vibrate faster.conduction These vibrations bounce off nearby molecules, transferring their kinetic energy to them. Those particles then move around the material, passing the energy on to more and more nearby molecules. The energy eventually transfers to the entire mass of particles in a given area, which we call the temperature of the material.
The hotter the material, the higher its temperature will be.conduction The rate of heat transfer is determined by how fast the molecules vibrate, how much kinetic energy they have, and what their position within the material is.conduction This is called the thermal conductivity of the material.conduction Different materials have different rates of conduction, with some being much more efficient than others. Some of this is due to structure, density and how the materials are put together; however, all of this can be predicted using the equation below, which takes into account the thermal conductivity, the material's cross sectional area, the difference in temperature between two points, and the distance that the heat must travel.
In insulators (non-metals), conduction is based on passing vibrations from atom to atom.conduction conduction However, in good conductors like metals, part of the thermal energy is transferred through collisions between free electrons and atoms.conduction This is much faster than just passing vibrations from atom to atom, so metals can conduct heat a lot more quickly than insulators.
Whenever a change in the temperature of a material is introduced, the temperatures within the material will converge toward a new equilibrium over time.conduction If the changes are too rapid, then the temperature distribution will never converge and the system will remain in a transient state.conduction However, if the temperature changes slowly enough, then it will take longer for the system to reach equilibrium but it will still do so in time. This is why it is important to control how much heat is added or removed from a system.