wasser_1@viking.DEC (John A. Wasser) (05/07/85)
>> >> Consider that if you were at f1 and looked in any direction >> you would see black-body radiation that depended on the >> temperature of f2. If f2 is colder than you, you would >> loose heat to it by radiation. If f2 is hotter than you >> you would gain heat from it. If f2 is the same temperature >> as you, you would neither loose nor gain. > > There is an appeal to fuzzy thinking here. > What fuzzy thinking? According to my physics book "Heat energy flows spontaneously from hot objects to cooler objects but not vice versa." and they give the formula: (delta Q) / t = K (T1**4 - T0**4) (delta Q)/t is the ammount of heat lost by radiation per unit time K is some positive constant T1 is the temperature of the hot object T0 is the temperature of the 'surroundings' (in this case, the other object) This formula is called Stefan's Law and it is clear that an object hotter than its surroundings will loose heat to its surroundings in a quantity proportional to the difference in the fourth power of the respective temperatures. In short, the hotter object will loose heat and the cooler object will gain heat until the two objects are the same temperature. At that point (T1 .eq. T0) the transfer of heat energy stops. I'm sorry I didn't put all this information in the original post... I thought the readers of net.physics would know this stuff. -John A. Wasser Work address: ARPAnet: WASSER%VIKING.DEC@decwrl.ARPA Usenet: {allegra,Shasta,decvax}!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-viking!wasser Easynet: VIKING::WASSER Telephone: (617)486-2505