When the electric heater is on and there is sunlight, flowing particles appear (not the dust, more like shadows on the ground.) What are those and why does this happen?
In: Physics
The heater is warming the air that’s in contact with it, which becomes lower in density and rises. Lower density air also has a different speed that light can travel through it (all materials have such a speed, with empty vacuum having the fastest speed – the speed of light).
Because of this difference in speed between room temperature air and heated air, any light that travels through the space around your heater is refracted – bent – roughly randomly, thus you get waves of what is essentially shadows projected onto a surface.
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