Author: Lou Bloomfield

What is heat? What actually flows from a hot body to a cold body?

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What is heat? What actually flows from a hot body to a cold body? — AW, Pakistan

Heat is thermal energy that is flowing from one object to another. While several centuries ago, people thought heat was a fluid, which they named “caloric,” we now know that it is simply energy that is being transferred. Heat moves via several mechanisms, including conduction, convection, and radiation. Conduction is the easiest to visualize—the more rapidly jittering atoms and molecules in a hotter object will transfer some of their energy to the more slowly jittering atoms in molecules in a colder object when you touch the two objects together. Even though no atoms or molecules are exchanged, their energy is. In convection, moving fluid carries thermal energy along with it from one object to another. In this case, there is material exchanged although usually only temporarily. In radiation, the atoms and molecules exchange energy by sending thermal radiation back and forth. Thermal radiation is electromagnetic waves and includes infrared light. A hotter object sends more infrared light toward a colder object than vice versa, so the hotter object gives up thermal energy to the colder object.

If ball bearings create no friction, why do bearings have bearing grease as an e…

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If ball bearings create no friction, why do bearings have bearing grease as an essential ingredient?

Actually, some bearings are dry (no grease or oil) and still last a very long time. The problem is that the idea touch-and-release behavior is hard to achieve in a bearing. The balls or rollers actually slip a tiny bit as they rotate and they may rub against the sides or retainers in the bearing. This rubbing produces wear as well as wasting energy. To reduce this wear and sliding friction, most bearings are lubricated.

If you walk up 10 steps, one by one, do you exert the same amount of energy if y…

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If you walk up 10 steps, one by one, do you exert the same amount of energy if you walk up the same set of 10 steps two by two? How are energy and effort related, or are they?

Ideally, it doesn’t matter how many steps you take with each step—the work you do in lifting yourself up a staircase depends only on your starting height and your ending height (assuming that you don’t accelerate or decelerate in the overall process and thus change your kinetic energy, too). But there are inefficiencies in your walking process that lead you to waste energy as heat in your own body. So the energy you convert from food energy to gravitational potential energy in climbing the stairs is fixed, but the energy you use in carrying out this procedure depends on how you do it. The extra energy you use mostly ends up as thermal energy, but some may end up as sound or chemical changes in the staircase, etc.

How do anti-lock brake systems work?

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How do anti-lock brake systems work?

If you brake your car too rapidly, the force of static friction between the wheels and the ground will become so large that it will exceed its limit and the wheels will begin to skid across the ground. Once skidding occurs, the stopping force becomes sliding friction instead of static friction. The sliding friction force is generally weaker than the maximum static friction force, so the stopping rate drops. But more importantly, you lose steering when the wheels skid. An anti-lock braking system senses when the wheels suddenly stop turning during braking and briefly release the brakes. The wheel can then turn again and static friction can reappear between the wheel and the ground.

How can a ball create thermal energy or “get hotter”?

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How can a ball create thermal energy or “get hotter”?

When a ball bounces, some of its molecules slide across one another rather than simply stretching or bending. This sliding leads to a form of internal sliding friction and sliding friction converts useful energy into thermal energy. The more sliding friction that occurs within the ball, the less the ball stores energy for the rebound and the worse the ball’s bounce. The missing energy becomes thermal energy in the ball and the ball’s temperature increases.

I don’t understand work done without any acceleration. Since F=ma and a=0, F=0 a…

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I don’t understand work done without any acceleration. Since F=ma and a=0, F=0 and thus W=0.

You are merging two equations out of context. The force you exert on an object can be non-zero without causing that object to accelerate. For example, if someone else is pushing back on the object, the object may not accelerate. If the object moves away from you as you push on it, then you’ll be doing work on the object even though it’s not accelerating. The only context in which you can merge those two equations (Force=mass x acceleration and Work=Force x distance) is when you are exerting the only force on the object. In that case, your force is the one that determines the object’s acceleration and your force is the one involved in doing work. In that special case, if the object doesn’t accelerate, then you do no work because you exert no force on the object! If someone else is pushing the object, then the force causing it to accelerate is the net force and not just your force on the object. As you can see, there are many forces around and you have to be careful tacking formulae together without thinking carefully about the context in which they exist.

What is thermal energy?

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What is thermal energy?

While we ordinarily associate energy with an object’s overall movement or position or shape, the individual atoms and molecules within the object can also have their own separate portions of energy. Thermal energy is the energy associated with the motions and positions of the individual atoms within the object. While an object may be sitting still, its atoms and molecules are always jittering about, so they have kinetic energies. When they push against one another during a bounce, they also have potential energies. These internal energies, while hard to see, are thermal energy.

When a rubber ball bounces or rebounds, does the weight of the ball determine ho…

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When a rubber ball bounces or rebounds, does the weight of the ball determine how many times it bounces?

Each time the ball bounces, it rises to a height that is a certain fraction of its height before that bounce. The ratio of these two heights is the fraction of the ball’s energy that is stored and returned during the bounce. A very elastic ball will return about 90% of its energy after a bounce, returning to 90% of its original height after a bounce. A relatively non-elastic ball may only return about 20% of its energy and bounce to only 20% of its original height. It is this energy efficiency that determines how many times a ball bounces. The missing energy is usually converted into thermal energy within the ball’s internal structure.

You discussed how an egg doesn’t bounce because it doesn’t have time and instead…

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You discussed how an egg doesn’t bounce because it doesn’t have time and instead it breaks. Why, then, does a mouse ball (in a computer mouse) or a bowling ball not bounce? It doesn’t break, so why doesn’t the support force make it bounce back upward. Does this relate to elasticity?

Actually, both a mouse ball and a bowling ball will bounce somewhat if you drop them on a suitably hard surface. It does have to do with elasticity. During the impact, the ball’s surface dents and the force that dents the ball does work on the ball—the force on the ball’s surface is inward and the ball’s surface moves inward. Energy is thus being invested in the ball’s surface. What the ball does with this energy depends on the ball. If the ball is an egg, the denting shatters the egg and the energy is wasted in the process of scrambling the egg’s innards. But in virtually any normal ball, some or most of the work done on the ball’s surface is stored in the elastic forces within the ball—this elastic potential energy, like all potential energies, is stored in forces. This stored energy allows the surface to undent and do work on other things in the process. During the rebound, the ball’s surface undents. Although it’s a little tricky to follow the exact flow of energy during the rebound, the elastic potential energy in the dented ball becomes kinetic energy in the rebounding ball. But even the best balls waste some of the energy involved in denting their surfaces. That’s why balls never bounce perfectly and never return to their original heights when dropped on a hard, stationary surface. Some balls are better than others at storing and returning this energy, so they bounce better than others.