How does cold transfer if it’s just the absence of heat?
In: Physics
Think of heat as a bunch of super bouncy balls. If you have big box and you pour a lot of these balls in one end of it, then they are going to be bouncing into each other and on the walls. This is the hot end of the box.
In the other end of the box there are no balls. This is the cold end of the box.
Now, every time a ball bounces towards the hot end it’s more likely to bounce of another ball, because there’s loads of them.
But if it bounces towards the cold end it’s got more free space and is less likely to bounce of another ball.
This way balls migrate over towards the cold end until the balls are pretty much evened out across the box. The cold end has become hotter and the hot end has become colder.
But the emptyness(cold) hasn’t moved to the hot end, it’s just that some bouncyness has moved from the hot end to the cold side so now the hot end is less hot (or less full of bouncy balls)
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