The Effect of Insulation on the Rate of Cooling

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The Effect of Insulation on the Rate of Cooling

P PLANNING

The Problem

The problem which I intend to investigate is out if insulation affects

the rate of cooling, and whether the amounts of insulation would

affect the rate of cooling

Scientific Background

An insulator is any of various substances that blocks or slows down

the flow of heat, they can only transfer energy slowly. Many materials

make air as an insulator, because air is an excellent insulator.

Air can reduce heat lost due to conduction. The material has to trap

the air to get the best result. This is to avoid warm air escaping and

taking the energy with it.

Energy can be transferred in four main ways when you heat something:

by conduction, convection, radiation and evaporation.

In conduction the particles are joined together by bonds, when the

material is heated the particles vibrate really fast, they have

kinetic energy. A fairly still part in a cold part of the material

can pick up vibration from an atom in a hot part of the metal. The

energy is transferred from one particle to another very quickly. Soon

particles from far away have more and more kinetic energy, heating the

material. A good conductor is metal.

In convection, particles in a fluid moves all the time. When you heat

a fluid, energy is transferred to the particles. The particles move

faster and get further apart, so the heated part of the fluid expands.

This makes the heated fluid less dense than the unheated fluid.

Because the fluid is less dense, the warm fluid floats above the cool

fluid, taking its extra energy with it.

In radiation particles are not needed. Silver surfaces and smooth

white surfaces are bad at absorbing and bad at emitting radiation.

Black surfaces are good at absorbing and good at emitting radiation.

In evaporation, the particles in a liquid sticks together, but much

more weakly than particles in a solid. The particles move about and

constantly bump into each other, they have kinetic energy.

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