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

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.

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