Can solid objects transmit heat?

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 Can solid objects transmit heat?

Answer:

Yes, solid objects can transmit heat. Heat can be transferred through solids by three modes of heat transfer: conduction, convection, and radiation.

Conduction is the transfer of heat through a material due to a temperature gradient. When one part of a solid object is heated, the heat energy is transferred to neighbouring particles through collisions, and the heat gradually spreads throughout the object.

Convection is the transfer of heat through the movement of a fluid or gas. In solids, convection occurs when the material itself moves, such as in the case of a hot fluid flowing through a pipe.

Radiation is the transfer of heat through electromagnetic waves. All objects, including solids, emit thermal radiation, and this radiation can be absorbed by other objects, which then increases their temperature.

In summary, solid objects can indeed transmit heat, through the modes of conduction, convection, and radiation.

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Same question can be written in many ways, like

How is heat transferred in solids?

How does heat energy travel through solids?

To answer these questions, let us do an experiment, and do try this experiment at your home to learn it.

Experiment:

Take 30cm long metal rod, a candle and three big round marbles. Now lit the candle and let few drops of the wax fall on the rod, about 5cm away from one end of the rod. Take one marble and fix it on the molten wax and press it hard before the wax dries. The marble will stick to the rod when the wax dries.

Similarly, fix another marble on the rod at a point about 3 to 4cm away from the first marble. Fix the third and the last marble on the rod in the same way again, maintaining the same distance from the second marble.

Now start heating with the burning candle that end of the rod near which the marble have been fixed and observe what happens. Does the heating of the rod not affect the marble at all? Or, do all the marble drop down at the same time or in a particular order.

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If you fail to answer hese questions, this experiment would demonstrate how the solid objects transmit heat. It is owing to this reason that the wax holding the marble nearest to the end of the rod being heated, would melt first and hence that marble would be first to fall. Heat would then reach up to the second marble and lastly to the third marble. They would fall too but one by one and in that order only.

Solid substances which can transmit heat from their one end to the other are known as good conductors of heat and the manner in which the heat is transmitted is called conduction.

Know more in Clinical Thermometers and Laboratory Thermometer. 

A video on this experiment will be uploaded soon.