Heat

A Carnot heat engine, which operates on the Carnot cycle, the theoretical ideal thermodynamic cycle that provides an upper limit on the efficiency that any classical thermodynamic engine.

Heat, in thermodynamics, is energy in transfer to or from a thermodynamic system, by mechanisms other than thermodynamic work or transfer of matter. The various mechanisms of energy transfer that define heat are stated in the next section of this article. The conventional symbol used to represent the amount of heat transferred in a thermodynamic process is Q or q. As an amount of energy (being transferred), the SI unit of heat is the joule (J).

Heat Transfer

Energy is always conserved, likewise, so is heat. In many scenarios where energy is perceived to have been "lost", (e.g. in the case of friction), it is merely transferred into heat. Heat itself can transfer in many modes: Conduction, convection, and radiation.

Conduction works by diffusing heat between adjacent particles, following Fourier's laws of conduction. When there is a temperature difference between touching surfaces or within a liquid, particles will vibrate and transfer some of that energy, until the entire system has an equal temperature.

Dependencies

• Bloomery furnace
• Electricity
• Fire
• Generator
• Kiln
  • Energy
  • Heat
• Lithium
• Potassium
• Sodium
• Water
  (alkali metal reactive)

See also

• Biomass
• Fuel

References

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Heat, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (view authors).