Why and how is it that my car can be covered in frost in the morning, but it never got to or below freezing? 35 degrees F the other morning and the windshield was covered!
In: Chemistry
Heat can pass by convection (moving fluids), conduction (heat movement through an object or between touching objects), and radiation (objects radiate “light” (electromagnetic energy) at a frequency proportional to their temperature).
A clear night sky is bloody cold. If it weren’t for the warm blanket of greenhouse gases it’d be about three degrees absolute. Even with, the sky is well below freezing.
The air around your car can’t pump enough heat into it to make up for the heat that the car is radiating into the cold night sky. The car will be colder than the air around it. If the car ends up warmer than freezing you get dew, if it ends up below freezing you get frost.
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