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The heat transfer processes (or kinetics) are governed by the rates at which various related physical phenomena occur, such as (for example) the rate of particle collisions in classical mechanics. These various states and kinetics determine the heat transfer, i.e., the net rate of energy storage or transport.
The process of heat transfer from one place to another place without the movement of particles is called conduction, such as when placing a hand on a cold glass of water—heat is conducted from the warm skin to the cold glass, but if the hand is held a few inches from the glass, little conduction would occur since air is a poor conductor of heat.
Convection is the heat transfer by the macroscopic movement of a fluid. This type of transfer takes place in a forced-air furnace and in weather systems, for example. Heat transfer by radiation occurs when microwaves, infrared radiation, visible light, or another form of electromagnetic radiation is emitted or absorbed. An obvious example is ...
where A is the surface area, is the temperature driving force, Q is the heat flow per unit time, and h is the heat transfer coefficient. Within heat transfer, two principal types of convection can occur: Forced convection can occur in both laminar and turbulent flow.
The second law of thermodynamics is a physical law based on universal empirical observation concerning heat and energy interconversions.A simple statement of the law is that heat always flows spontaneously from hotter to colder regions of matter (or 'downhill' in terms of the temperature gradient).
Transport of material in stagnant fluid or across streamlines of a fluid in a laminar flow occurs by molecular diffusion. Two adjacent compartments separated by a partition, containing pure gases A or B may be envisaged. Random movement of all molecules occurs so that after a period molecules are found remote from their original positions.
In thermodynamics, a spontaneous process is a process which occurs without any external input to the system. A more technical definition is the time-evolution of a system in which it releases free energy and it moves to a lower, more thermodynamically stable energy state (closer to thermodynamic equilibrium ).
In microscopic terms, heat is a transfer quantity, and is described by a transport theory, not as steadily localized kinetic energy of particles. Heat transfer arises from temperature gradients or differences, through the diffuse exchange of microscopic kinetic and potential particle energy, by particle collisions and other interactions.