Thermal Condutivity essays

Thermal Condutivity essays The objective of experiment #6 is to examine the thermal conductivity of lexan and glass. Ice was used to check for the insulation capacity. Thermal conduction is a term used to represent a form of heat transport due to interactions between ions, atoms, and molecules in a substance but at the same time the ions, atoms, and molecules are not being transferred. Metals are a good example of thermal conductivity because they have free electrons floating around. Heat is the change of kinetic energy which is transferred from one point to another because of the difference in temperature of these points. The unit for heat is joule (J). The formula to calculate the amount of heat conducted through material is: where Q is the heat conducted; A is the area where conduction takes place; T2- T1 is the difference of temperature between the top and bottom parts of the material; t is the total time that takes the conduction to take place; k is the thickness of the material; k is the coefficient of thermal conductivity of the specific material. The unit of k is Watt per meter-Kelvin (W/mK). The thermal conductivity of a material is important to civil engineers especially because when they build a building, they have to make sure they prevent heat flow between apartments by using materials for the walls that have small value of k. The apparatus used in experiment 6 was a steam generator. The tank of the steam generator (1 L) should be filled approximately  ¾ full of water and the dial should be set to 8. A slab of a specific material is put between a steam chamber and a block of ice in mold. The steam, coming from the steam generator, enters the chamber. As time passes by, a difference in temperature between the bottom and the top part of the material is reached. The melted ice is collected and measured in order to measure the heat transferred through the sample. The temperature insi ...