Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
A number of materials contract on heating within certain temperature ranges; this is usually called negative thermal expansion, rather than "thermal contraction".For example, the coefficient of thermal expansion of water drops to zero as it is cooled to 3.983 °C (39.169 °F) and then becomes negative below this temperature; this means that water has a maximum density at this temperature, and ...
The metals involved in a bimetallic strip can vary in composition so long as their thermal expansion coefficients differ. The metal of lower thermal expansion coefficient is sometimes called the passive metal, while the other is called the active metal. Copper, steel, brass, iron, and nickel are commonly used metals in bimetallic strips. [6]
Thermalisation, thermal equilibrium, and temperature are therefore important fundamental concepts within statistical physics, statistical mechanics, and thermodynamics; all of which are a basis for many other specific fields of scientific understanding and engineering application. Examples of thermalisation include:
An everyday life example for the need for materials with tailored thermal expansion are dental fillings. If the fillings tend to expand by an amount different from the teeth , for example when drinking a hot or cold drink, it might cause a toothache .
A material property is an intensive property of a material, i.e., a physical property or chemical property that does not depend on the amount of the material. These quantitative properties may be used as a metric by which the benefits of one material versus another can be compared, thereby aiding in materials selection.
Simulation of thermal convection in the Earth's mantle. Hot areas are shown in red, cold areas are shown in blue. A hot, less-dense material at the bottom moves upwards, and likewise, cold material from the top moves downwards. Convection (or convective heat transfer) is the transfer of heat from one place to another due to the movement of fluid.
As an example in everyday life, hand warmers make use of the oxidation of iron to achieve an exothermic reaction: 4Fe + 3O 2 → 2Fe 2 O 3 Δ H ⚬ = - 1648 kJ/mol A particularly important class of exothermic reactions is combustion of a hydrocarbon fuel, e.g. the burning of natural gas:
An example of such a parameter is viscosity, which may begin to significantly vary horizontally across layers of fluid. This breaks the symmetry of the system, and generally changes the pattern of up- and down-moving fluid from stripes to hexagons, as seen at right. Such hexagons are one example of a convection cell.