Does cold radiate outwards? What’s the process by which a hot object becomes cold?
In: Physics
Cold doesn’t radiate anywhere. Cold is just a lack of heat. In heat terms, you can think of cold as nothing – a vacuum. Heat always wants to move to where cold is.
A hot object becomes cold because its heat leaks into the cold. Everything around it technically becomes a little bit warmer, but that heat spreads out into the entire world, and it quickly becomes so diluted it makes no measurable difference for the most part. It’s a bit like if you took a cup of red paint and poured it into the ocean. At first you’d be able to see it, but soon it would get so mixed in with the billions and trillions of gallons of water in the ocean that you wouldn’t be able to see any red any more.
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