How does heat vanish.

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The question doesn’t get much more detailed, but how does head vanish.
My understanding is that heat is a direct type of energy, and energy cannot be created or destroyed, only change type, but I get that, with a heater for example, electrical energy becomes heat energy, I don’t understand why the heat energy then becomes something else, or indeed what it becomes that isn’t heat, because cold isn’t a type of energy.

In: Physics

7 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Heat doesn’t vanish it dissipates, basically it shares a little bit of heat energy with everything around it as the energy continues to move away from the source it becomes so small that any increase in temperature isn’t able to be measured.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Everything already has “heat energy”, but some things have more heat energy than others. Something that’s cold still has heat energy, just low amounts of it.

Our bodies have heat energy, as does the air around us, and energy tries to spread out to be the same everywhere. If the air around you is colder than you are, the energy from your body will be used to heat up the air. This means you’re losing heat energy, which is what makes you feel cold. If the air is warmer than you, then it has more heat energy, so it gives more energy to you, which makes you feel warmer.

If you turn on a heater, it gives the air around it more heat, and the air spreads around the room, creating a mix of high heat energy air and low heat energy air. These mixes also share the energy they have, so you end up with a room of medium heat energy. If you keep the heater running, the high heat energy mixes with the medium, and you get warm air. Keep it running longer, the high heat energy mixes with the warm to get hot.

However, the air is also sharing it’s heat with everything else in the room. The walls will start to warm up as the air gives some of its energy to them, and the walls will pass that energy on to the air on the other side, albeit very slowly.

The air can also leave the room, taking its energy with it. If the warm air leaves, most likely the cold air from the outside of the room will come in, which will make the room colder overall.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Generally speaking, heat doesn’t vanish. It spreads out and causes the temperature of the surroundings to increase. Since the amount of heat from a heater is small relative to the total surroundings, it is hard for any single heater to increase the temperature of a large area/volume significantly.

The energy is still there it is simply spread out to such an extent that measuring it is difficult.

An analogy would be say a swimming pool filled with water. You can add a glass of water to the swimming pool. That added water didn’t disappear but it would be difficult to measure any change in the water level of the swimming pool from a single glass of water. The water is analogous to heat energy and the level of the swimming pool is analogous to the temperature.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Heat doesn’t vanish. It dissipates. Entropy is the process by which energy equalises through a given space. The earth is relatively high energy compared to space because the atmosphere retains the Sun’s energy, but energy from the earth is still dissipating into space all the time. Which is ultimately where all the “excess” energy in the earth’s system goes.

Eventually all energy in the universe will be exactly equal, which is referred to as the Heat Death of the Universe.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Heat doesn’t vanish, but it spreads out. Heat inherently seeks to travel from areas of higher energy density to areas of lower energy density, as a direct consequence of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. As a result, heat never truly disappears, but instead becomes unavailable for usage in various processes.

Note that is also is incredibly important in utilizing heat for energy; because we know that heat *always* moves in a given direction over time, we can take advantage of that movement in order to harness heat energy and use it, which is why every single heat-based power production system functions the way it does.

Anonymous 0 Comments

It does not vanish. Due to thermal equilibrium, everything wants to be the same temperature basically. If heat comes in contact with something colder than itself, the heat is transfered to the colder object to bring it closer in temperature. (Object being any particle or mass)The energy is the atoms protons etc “vibrating” in a sense. The colder something is the less it vibrates. The hotter the more it vibrates. The energy isn’t lost, just transfered.

Anonymous 0 Comments

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