Does the more you fill a hot water bottle increase it’s heat retention?

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Whilst it’s still cold working from home, I’ll often use a hot water bottle to keep warm. I’m often curious if it’s better to fill it more or less and whether it makes any difference to the bottle staying warm. In consistent and matching conditions, would it make any difference how much water was put in the bottle, and why?

In: Chemistry

7 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Heat is energy. By putting more hot water in you have increased the total energy in the hot water bottle. The hot water bottles surface area will stretch a little probably but not by much so let’s ignore that for convenience. So with the discharge of energy being the same, having more energy will allow it to discharge for longer.

A good analogue would be a AA battery will power something longer than a AAA battery as it has more energy.

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