Does the required time to heat a body from 20°C to 40°C the same as from 40°C to 60°C?

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Does the required time to heat a body from 20°C to 40°C the same as from 40°C to 60°C?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

It is better to compare this in terms of energy instead of time.

To keep it simple, say that to heat a bucket of water from 20C to 40C you need one unit of energy.

The amount you will need to do the same from 40C to 60C will depend on the specific heat of the water. This is a physical quantity that depends on the type of material and the current temperature.

Keeping the example for water, the specific heat increases slightly with temperature, meaning that the hotter your water currently is, the more energy you will need to keep heating it. So to go from 40 to 60 you will need one unit of energy plus X.

If the output of energy you have in terms of time is constant (ie, how much energy you can give in a given time), then the time to heat up from 20 to 40 will be shorter than to heat up from 40 to 60. If you can, however, just increase the amount of energy you are supplying, then the overall time doesn’t have much meaning.

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