Heat

Heat is a shortened way of saying "heat energy." When something's hot, it has a lot
of heat energy; when it's cold, it has less. But even things that seem cold (such as
polar bears and icebergs) have rather more heat energy than you might suppose.
Objects can store heat because the atoms and molecules inside them are jostling
around and bumping into one another like people in a crowd. This idea is called the
kinetic theory of matter, because it describes heat as a kind of kinetic
energy stored by the atoms and molecules from which materials are made. It was
developed in the 19th century by various scientists, including Austrian physicist
Ludwig Boltzman (18441906) and British physicist James Clerk Maxwell (1831
1879).
The kinetic theory helps us understand where the energy goes when we heat
something up. If you put a pan full of cold water on a hot stove, you're going to
make the molecules in the water move around more quickly. The more heat you
supply, the faster the molecules move and the further apart they get. Eventually,
they bump around so much that they break apart from one another. At that point,
the liquid you've been heating turns into a gas: your water becomes steam and
starts evaporating away.
What happens when something has no heat at all?
Now suppose we try the opposite trick. Let's take a jug of water and put it in
the refrigerator to cool it down. A refrigerator works by systematically removing
heat energy from food. Put water inside a refrigerator and it immediately starts to
lose heat energy. The more heat it loses, the more kinetic energy its molecules lose,
the more slowly they move, and the closer they get. Soon or later, they get close
enough to lock together in crystals; the liquid turns to solid; and you find yourself
with a jug of ice!
But what if you have a super-amazing refrigerator that keeps on cooling the water
so it gets colder... and colder... and colder. A home freezer, if you have one, can take
the temperature down to somewhere between 10C and 20C (14F to 4F).
But what if you keep on cooling lower than that, taking away even more heat
energy? Eventually, you'll reach a temperature where the water molecules pretty
much stop moving altogether because they have absolutely no kinetic energy left.
For reasons we won't go into here, this magic temperature is 273.15 C
(459.67F) and we refer to it as absolute zero.

In theory, absolute zero is the lowest temperature anything can ever reach. In
practice, it's virtually impossible to cool anything down that muchscientists have
tried very hard but still not actually reached such a low temperature. Amazing
things happen when you get close to absolute zero. Some materials, for example,
can lose virtually all their resistance and become amazing conductors
of electricity called superconductors. There's a great PBS website where you can
find out lots more about absolute zero and the remarkable things that happen there.
What's the difference between heat and temperature?
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Now you know about absolute zero, it's easy to see why something like an iceberg
(which could be at the chilly temperature of about 3-4C or round about 40F) is
relatively hot. Compared to absolute zero, everything in our everyday world is hot
because its molecules are moving around and they have at least some heat energy.
Everything around us is also at a much hotter temperature than absolute zero.
You can see there's a close link between how much heat energy something has and
its temperature. So are heat energy and temperature just the same thing? No! Let's
get this clear:

Heat is the energy stored inside something.

Temperature is a measurement of how hot or cold something is.

An object's temperature doesn't tell us how much heat energy it has. It's easy to
see why not if you think about an iceberg and an ice cube. Both are at more or less
the same temperature but because the iceberg has far more mass than the ice
cube, it contains billions more molecules and a great deal more heat energy.
How can we measure temperature?
We measure temperature with thermometers using two common (and fairly
arbitrary) scales called Celsius (or centigrade) and Fahrenheit, named for Swedish
astronomer Anders Celsius (17011744) and German physicist Daniel Fahrenheit
(16861736).
There's also a scientific temperature scale called the Kelvin (or absolute scale),
named for British physicist William Thompson (later Lord Kelvin, 18241907).
Logically, the Kelvin scale makes much more sense to scientists because it runs
upward from absolute zero (which is also known as 0K, without a degree symbol
between the zero and the K). You'll see lots of Kelvin temperatures in physics, but
you won't find weather forecasters giving you temperatures that way. For the
record, a reasonably hot day (2030C) comes in at something like 290300K: you
just add 273 to your Celsius figure to convert to Kelvin.
How does heat travel?
One thing you've probably noticed about heat is that it doesn't generally stay where
you put it. Hot things get colder, cold things get hotter, andgiven enough time
most things eventually end up the same temperature. How come?
There's a basic law of physics called the second law of thermodynamics and it
says, essentially, that cups of coffee always go cold and ice creams always melt:
heat flows from hot things toward cold ones and never the other way around. You
never see coffee boiling all by itself or ice creams getting colder on sunny days! The
second law of thermodynamics is also responsible for the painful fuel bills that drop
through your letterbox several times a year. In short: the hotter you make your
home and the colder it is outside, the more heat you're going to lose. To reduce that
problem, you need to understand the three different ways in which heat can travel:
called conduction, convection, and radiation. Sometimes you'll see these referred to
as three forms of heat transfer.
Conduction
Conduction is how heat flows between two solidobjects that are at different
temperatures and touching one another (or between two parts of the same solid
object if they're at different temperatures). Walk on a stone floor in your bare feet
and it feels cold because heat flows rapidly out of your body into the floor by
conduction. Stir a saucepan of soup with a metal spoon and you'll soon have to find
a wooden one instead: heat travels rapidly along the spoon by conduction from the
hot soup into your fingers.
Convection
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Convection is the main way heat flows through liquids and gases. Put a pan of cold,
liquid soup on your stove and switch on the heat. The soup in the bottom of the
pan, closest to the heat, warms up quickly and becomes less dense (lighter) than
the cold soup above. The warmer soup rises upward and colder soup up above it
falls down to take its place. Pretty soon you've got a circulation of heat running
through the pan, a bit like an invisible heat conveyor, with warming, rising soup and
cooling, falling soup. Gradually, the whole pan heats up. Convection is also one of
the ways our homes heat up when we turn on the heating. Air warms up above the
heaters and rises into the air, pushing cold air down from the ceiling. Before long,
there's a circulation going on that gradually warms up the entire room.
Radiation
Radiation is the third major way in which heat travels. Conduction carries heat
through solids; convection carries heat through liquids and gases; but radiation can
carry heat through empty spaceeven through a vacuum. We know that much
simply because we're alive: almost everything we do on Earth is powered by solar
radiation beamed toward our planet from the Sun through the howling empty
darkness of space. But there's plenty of heat radiation on Earth too. Sit near a
crackling log fire and you'll feel heat radiating outward and burning your cheeks.
You're not in contact with the fire, so the heat's not coming to you by conduction
and, if you're outside, convection probably isn't carrying much toward you either.
Instead, all the heat you feel travels by radiationin straight lines, at the speed
of lightcarried by a type of electromagnetism called infrared radiation.
Why do some things take longer to heat up than others?
Different materials can store more or less heat depending on their internal atomic or
molecular structure. Water, for example, can store huge amounts of heatthat's
one of the reasons we use it in central-heating systemsthough it also takes a
relatively long time to heat up. Metals let heat pass through them very well and
heat up quickly, but they're not so good at storing heat. Things that store heat well
(like water) are said to have a high specific heat capacity.
The idea of specific heat capacity helps us understand the difference between heat
and temperature in another way. Suppose you place an empty copper saucepan on
top of a hot stove that's a certain temperature. Copper conducts heat very well and
has a relatively low specific heat capacity, so it heats up and cools down extremely
quickly (that's why cooking pots tend to have copper bottoms). But if you fill the
same pan with water, it takes far longer to heat up to the same temperature. Why?
Because you need to supply much more heat energy to raise the temperature of the
water by the same amount. Water's specific heat capacity is roughly 11 times
higher than copper's, so if you have the same mass of water and copper, it takes 11
times as much energy to raise the temperature of the water by the same number of
degrees.
Specific heat capacities can help you understand what happens when you heat your
home in different ways in winter-time. Air heats up relatively quickly for two
reasons: first, because the specific heat capacity of air is about a quarter of water's;
second, because air is a gas, it has relatively little mass. If your room is freezing and
you turn on a fan (convection) heater, you'll find everything seems to warm up very
quickly. That's because you're essentially just heating up the air. Turn off the fan
heater and the room will cool down pretty fast too because the air, by itself, doesn't
have much ability to store heat.
So how do you get your room really warm? Don't forget that there isn't just air in it
that you need to heat up: there's solid furniture, carpets, curtains, and lots of other
things too. It takes much longer to heat these things up because they're solid and
much more massive than the air. The more cold, solid objects you have in your
room, the more heat energy you have to supply to heat them all up to a particular
temperature. You'll need to heat them up using conduction and radiation as well as
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convectionand that takes time. But, because solid things store heat well, they also
take time to cool down. So, providing you have decent insulation to stop heat
escaping from the walls, windows, and so on, once your room has reached a certain
temperature, it should stay warm for some time without your having to add any
more heat.
Latent heat
Does more heat always make higher temperature? From what we've said so far, you
might be forgiven for thinking that giving something more heat always makes its
temperature rise. Generally that's true, but not always.
Suppose you have a lump of ice floating in a pan of water and you place it on your
hot stove. If you stick a thermometer in the ice-water mixture, you'll find it's around
0C (32F)the normal freezing point of water. But if you keep heating, you'll find
the temperature stays the same until pretty much all the ice has melted, even
though you're supplying more heat all the time. It's almost as though the ice-water
mixture is taking the heat you're giving it and hiding it away somewhere. Oddly
enough, that's exactly what's happening!

When a substance changes from solid to liquid or from liquid to gas, it takes energy
to change its state. To turn solid ice into liquid water, for example you have to push
the water molecules inside further apart and break apart the framework (or
crystalline structure) that holds them together. So while ice is melting (in other
words, during the change of state from solid water to liquid ice), all the heat energy
you supply is being used to separate molecules and none is left over for raising the
temperature.
The heat needed to change a solid into a liquid is called the latent heat of fusion.
Latent means hidden and "latent heat of fusion" refers to the hidden heat involved
in making a substance change state from solid to liquid or vice-versa. Similarly, you
need to supply heat to change a liquid into a gas, and this is called the latent heat
of vaporization.
Latent heat is a kind of energy and, although it may seem to be "hidden," it doesn't
vanish into thin air. When liquid water freezes and turns back to ice, the latent heat
of fusion is given off again. You can see this if you cool water systematically. To start
with, the temperature of the water falls regularly as you remove heat energy. But at
the point where liquid water turns to solid ice, you'll find water freezes without
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getting any colder. That's because the latent heat of fusion is being lost from the
liquid as it solidifies and it's stopping the temperature from falling so quickly.

Temperature Defined
Temperature is a measure of how hot or cold something is; specifically, a measure
of the average kinetic energy of the particles in an object, which is a type of
energy associated with motion. But how hot is hot, and how cold is cold? The terms
hot and cold are not very scientific terms. If we really want to specify how hot or
cold something is, we must use temperature. For instance, how hot is melted iron?
To answer that question, a physical scientist would measure the temperature of the
liquid metal. Using temperature instead of words, like hot or cold, reduces
confusion.
Temperature Depends on the Kinetic Energy of Particles
All matter is made of particles - atoms or molecules - that are in constant motion.
Because the particles are in motion, they have kinetic energy. The faster the
particles are moving, the more kinetic energy they have. What does temperature
have to do with kinetic energy? Well, as described in this figure, the more kinetic
energy the particles of an object have, the higher is the temperature of the object.

Temperature is an average measure. Particles of matter are constantly moving, but

they don't all move at the same speed and in the same direction all the time. As we
can see in this figure, the motion of the particles is random. The particles of matter
in an object move in different directions, and some particles move faster than
others. As a result, some particles have more kinetic energy than others. So what
determines an object's temperature? An object's temperature is the best
approximation of the kinetic energy of the particles. When we measure an object's
temperature, we measure the average kinetic energy of the particles in the object.
The higher the temperature, the faster the molecules of the substance move, on the
average. Dyes will spread more rapidly through hot water than cold water. This is
because of the increased motion of the molecules. Temperature does not have to do
with the number of molecules involved. Under given conditions, the temperatures of
10-ml and 100-ml samples of boiling water are equal. This means that the average
kinetic energy of the molecules is the same for the two different quantities of water.

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In this image, there is more tea in the teapot than in the mug, but the temperature
of the tea in the mug is the same as the temperature of the tea in the teapot.
Measuring Temperature
Since molecules are so small, you must use an indirect method to measure the
kinetic energy of the molecules of a substance. As heat is added to a substance, the
molecules move more rapidly. This increased motion causes a small increase in the
volume, or amount of space, taken up by most materials. There are devices that use
the expansion of a substance to give an indirect measure of temperature. Such
devices are called thermometers.
There are many types of thermometers. Many thermometers are thin glass tubes
filled with a liquid. Mercury and alcohol are often used in thermometers because
they remain liquids over a large temperature range. A change in temperature
causes a small change in the volume of the liquid. However, this effect is magnified
when the liquid expands in the very thin tube of the thermometer.

Thermometer
Some thermometers involve the use of bimetal strips. In such thermometers, strips
made of two different metals are bonded or glued together. Because the metals
expand at different rates, the combined strip bends in a certain direction when it is
heated. When it cools, it bends in the opposite direction. The figure below shows a
bimetal strip used as a thermostat. Athermostat is a device used to control
heating and cooling systems.

Thermostat
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Some thermometers, often used on the outside of aquariums, contain liquid crystals
that change color based on temperature. As temperature increases, the molecules
of the liquid crystal bump into each other more and more. This causes a change in
the structure of the crystals, which in turn affects their color. These thermometers
are able to accurately determine the temperature between 65 F and 85 F.

A thermometer with no marks, or graduations, would not be very useful to you. A

thermometer is calibrated by marking two fixed points. The space between these
fixed points is broken up into divisions called degrees. Degrees are used to indicate
temperature. There are three types of temperature scales commonly used today:
Celsius, Fahrenheit and Kelvin. We are used to expressing temperature with degrees
Fahrenheit (F). Scientists often use degrees Celsius (C), but the Kelvin (K) is the SI
unit for temperature.
Thermometers can measure temperature because of thermal expansion. Thermal
expansion is the increase in volume of a substance due to an increase in
temperature. As a substance gets hotter, its particles move faster. The particles
themselves do not expand; they just spread out so that the entire substance
expands. Different substances expand by different amounts for a given temperature
change. When you insert a thermometer into a hot substance, the liquid inside the
thermometer expands and rises. You measure the temperature of a substance by
measuring the expansion of the liquid in the thermometer.

Thermal and Kinetic Energy

Atoms are always in motion. Imagine you had a microscope powerful enough to see
individual molecules in a compound (or atoms in case of an element). You would see
that the molecules are in constant motion, even in a solid object. In a solid, the
molecules are not fixed in place, but act like they are connected by springs as
shown here.

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Molecules in solid
Each molecule stays in the same average place, but constantly jiggles back and
forth in all directions. As you might guess, the 'jiggling' means motion, and motion
means energy. This 'jiggling' is caused by thermal energy, which is a kind of kinetic
energy.

Displacement (symbolized d or s ), also called length or distance, is

a one-dimensional quantity representing the separation between
two defined points. The standard unit of displacement in the
International System of Units ( SI ) is the meter (m).
Displacement
A displacement is the shortest distance from the initial to the
final position of a point P.[1] Thus, it is the length of an imaginary straight path,
typically distinct from the path actually travelled by P. A "displacement vector"
represents the length and direction of that imaginary straight path.
A position vector expresses the position of a point P in space in terms of a
displacement from an arbitrary reference point O (typically the origin of a
coordinate system). Namely, it indicates both the distance and direction of an
imaginary motion along a straight line from the reference position to the actual
position of the point.
A displacement may be also described as a 'relative position': the final
position of a point (Rf) relative to its initial position (Ri), and a displacement vector
can be mathematically defined as the difference between the final and initial
position vectors:

In considering motions of objects over time the instantaneous velocity of the

object is the rate of change of the displacement as a function of time. The velocity
then is distinct from the instantaneous speed which is the time rate of change of the
distance traveled along a specific path. The velocity may be equivalently defined as
the time rate of change of the position vector. If one considers a moving initial
position, or equivalently a moving origin (e.g. an initial position or origin which is
fixed to a train wagon, which in turn moves with respect to its rail track), the
velocity of P (e.g. a point representing the position of a passenger walking on the
train) may be referred to as a relative velocity, as opposed to an absolute velocity,
which is computed with respect to a point which is considered to be 'fixed in space'
(such as, for instance, a point fixed on the floor of the train station).
For motion over a given interval of time, the displacement divided by the
length of the time interval defines the average velocity. (Note that the
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average velocity, as a vector, differs from the average speed that is the ratio of the
path lengtha scalarand the time interval.)

Sample Problem Solving:

An object moves from point A to point B to point C, then back to point B and then to
point C along the line shown in the figure below.
a) Find the distance covered by the moving object.
b) Find the magnitude and direction of the displacement of the object.

Solution to Problem 1:
a) distance = AB + BC + CB + BC = 5 + 4 + 4 + 4 = 17 km
b) The magnitude of the displacement is equal to the distance between the final
point C and the initial point A = AC = 9 km
The direction of the displacement is the direction of the ray AB.

Acceleration
Acceleration, in physics, is the rate at which the velocity of an object
changes over time. An object's acceleration is the net result of any and
all forcesacting on the object, as described by Newton's Second Law. The SI unit for
acceleration is the metre per second squared (m/s2). Accelerations are vector
quantities (they have magnitude and direction) and add according to
the parallelogram law. As a vector, the calculated net force is equal to the product
of the object's mass (a scalar quantity) and the acceleration.
For example, when a car starts from a standstill (zero relative velocity) and
travels in a straight line at increasing speeds, it is accelerating in the direction of
travel. If the car turns there is an acceleration toward the new direction. For this
example, we can call the accelerating of the car forward a "linear acceleration",
which passengers in the car might experience as force pushing them back into their
seats. When changing directions, we might call this "non-linear acceleration", which
passengers might experience as a sideways force. If the speed of the car decreases,
this is an acceleration in the opposite direction of the direction of the vehicle,
sometimes called deceleration. Passengers may experience deceleration as a
force lifting them away from their seats. Mathematically, there is no separate
formula for deceleration, as both are changes in velocity. Each of these
accelerations (linear, non-linear, deceleration) might be felt by passengers until
their velocity and direction match that of the car.
Sample Problem Solving:
What is the acceleration of an object that moves with uniform velocity?
Solution:
If the velocity is uniform, let us say V, then the initial and final velocities are both
equal to V and the definition of the acceleration gives
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average acceleration =

V-V
t - t0

=0

The acceleration of an object moving at a constant velocity is equal to 0.

Pressure
Pressure is force per unit area applied in a direction perpendicular to the
surface of an object. Gauge pressure (also spelled gagepressure)[a][not in citation given] is
the pressure relative to the local atmospheric or ambient pressure. Pressure is
measured in any unit of force divided by any unit of area. The SI unit of pressure is
the newton per square metre, which is called the pascal (Pa) after the seventeenthcentury philosopher and scientist Blaise Pascal. The lbf/square inch (PSI) is the
traditional unit of pressure in US/UK customary units. A pressure of 1 Pa
approximately equals the pressure exerted by a dollar bill resting flat on a table.
Everyday pressures are often stated in kilopascals (1 kPa = 1000 Pa) 1 kPa is
approximately one-seventh of a lbf/in2..
Sample Problem Solving:
Determine the mass of the Earth's atmosphere.
solution
Since pressure is force divided by area, the force of the atmosphere pressing
on the surface of the earth can be found by multiplying standard atmospheric
pressure by the surface area of the earth. Given that the force of an object's weight
is its mass times the acceleration due to gravity, the mass of the earth's
atmosphere is the force it exerts divided by the acceleration due to gravity. Or
symbolically
F = PA = P(4r2) = W = mg

m
=

m
=

W
g

P(4r2
)
g

(101,325 Pa)(4)(6.37 1
06 m)2
9.8 m/s2

5.27 1018 kg

Force
In physics, a force is any interaction which tends to change the motion of an
object.[1] In other words, a force can cause an object with mass to change
itsvelocity (which includes to begin moving from a state of rest), i.e., to accelerate.
Force can also be described by intuitive concepts such as a push or a pull. A force
has both magnitude and direction, making it a vector quantity. It is measured in
the SI unit of newtons and represented by the symbol F.
The original form of Newton's second law states that the net force acting
upon an object is equal to the rate at which its momentum changes with time. If the
mass of the object is constant, this law implies that the acceleration of an object is
directly proportional to the net force acting on the object, is in the direction of the
net force, and is inversely proportional to the mass of the object. As a formula, this
is expressed as:

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where the arrows imply a vector quantity possessing both magnitude and direction.
Related concepts to force include: thrust, which increases the velocity of an
object; drag, which decreases the velocity of an object; and torque which
produces changes in rotational speed of an object. In an extended body, each part
usually applies forces on the adjacent parts; the distribution of such forces through
the body is the so-called mechanical stress. Pressure is a simple type of stress.
Stress usually causes deformation of solid materials, or flow in fluids.

Vibration
Vibration is a mechanical phenomenon whereby oscillations occur about
an equilibrium point. The oscillations may be periodic such as the motion of a
pendulum or random such as the movement of a tire on a gravel road.
Vibration is occasionally "desirable". For example, the motion of a tuning fork,
the reed in a woodwind instrument or harmonica, or mobile phones or the cone of
a loudspeaker is desirable vibration, necessary for the correct functioning of the
various devices.
More often, vibration is undesirable, wasting energy and creating
unwanted sound noise. For example, the vibrational motions of engines, electric
motors, or any mechanical device in operation are typically unwanted. Such
vibrations can be caused by imbalances in the rotating parts, uneven friction, the
meshing of gear teeth, etc. Careful designs usually minimize unwanted vibrations.
The study of sound and vibration are closely related. Sound, or
"pressure waves", are generated by vibrating structures (e.g. vocal cords); these
pressure waves can also induce the vibration of structures (e.g. ear drum). Hence,
when trying to reduce noise it is often a problem in trying to reduce vibration.
Sample Problem Solving:
Obtain torsional natural frequencies of the system shown in Figure 9.10 using
the transfer matrix method. Check results with the closed form solution available.
Take G = 0.8 x 1011 N/m2

Figure 9.10 :
Solution : We have following properties of the rotor

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