Rheem 71-40d Water Heater Element

First snow reflected light and heat capacity

Today, on 26 Nov. 2010, it has for the first time this autumn snow with me in Linz. When I was in the evening with our dog outside, I noticed the uneven snow cover. In some places the snow has already been left, in others not. Part of the cool items and areas of the soil faster, others slower. This is due to the heat capacity and thermal conductivity of the body depends but also on their size. The following figures show some examples.

on the leaves of plants, and the foliage at the base of snow already, since they are already cooled down, the ground itself is still warm.

The sidewalk was dug up a few days ago to repair a water pipe. The area with the new surface and the fresh asphalt layer has a different heat capacity, or better insulation so that the surface faster are cold and the snow is already there.

The different areas of the hood cool at different rates from. The reinforcements under the sheet are thicker, have a greater heat capacity and are still not cooled down enough that the snow will lie in between The thinner sheet is cooled down and covered with snow.

larger the heat capacity, which is the amount of heat stored per unit of temperature, the longer a body needs to he to a certain temperature cools.

If the thermal conductivity is very low, the surface may have cooled, the inside but still be warm - which is good insulation. At high thermal conductivity, the surface is much colder than the interior. The surface will remain warm until the body has cooled completely.

But the size of the area with which a body can produce heat plays an appropriate role, and as is the overall size of the one body. The larger an object is, the greater are generally its volume and its surface. But the volume increases with the size faster, slower, and therefore the surface is a large body heat more slowly, as this is only on the surface. In physics, called such a size-dependent behavior with scaling or scaling law.

In the photos a few more or less large white dots are visible. These are the snowflakes in the air, which reflect the light of the photo flash. The closer the snowflakes are the bigger and brighter they will appear.