Temperature And Heat

Okay. I wanna start this thread by asking a question. Is fire hot or cold. I'll give you a minute. You ready? What do you think?


You think you got it? Okay, the answer is... yes, sort of. Wait, what?

Well, hot and cold aren't absolute. They're just a relative comparison of thermal energy, based on the amount of thermal energy transferred between two things (before I go any further, I like to state that this is a very, very basic overview and isn't, therefore, entirely perfectly accurate). So how can you tell if something has more or less thermal energy than, for example, you? There's two easy ways. The first is to take the temperature of the items. Temperature is an absolute measure of energy, not a relative comparison, so it should be the same no matter who measures it. While temperature is really useful for this, we like to think of things in a more relative sense. "Boiling hot" means a lot more to us than "100°" (Celsius of course, freedom units have no place in science). This brings us to the other method for telling if something has more or less energy than you do. Touch it.

Energy likes to move from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration, meaning that when you touch something "hot" the energy in the "hot" object transfers from the object to your hand, because your hand is lower in energy. The same is true in reverse, when something is "cold", it absorbs energy. This is what happens when you touch ice, for example. This is also why ice melts when you touch it; the energy from your hand is enough to raise the ice's temperature and melt it (sort of, again this isn't entirely a perfect explanation but it's good enough for this). So when you touch something that emits energy, it feels hot, but when you touch something that absorbs energy, it feels cold. If you touch something with the same amount of thermal energy, it feels the same. With that knowledge, you can tell if something has more or less thermal energy than your hand.

So, what is the point of this thread? Well, partly I just wanted to share all of this cool and useful infor- okay fine, you got me. I just wanted to point out that the descriptions of the solar accessories from LI make exactly zero sense and are in fact the opposite of how heat and energy work; if something absorbs heat, it would feel cold - and that they should really be fixed. Please.

 

TLDR: water is wet