Re: pinhole total thermal energy question

Date view Thread view Subject view Author view Attachment view

From: Christopher Reese (creese@seq.org)
Date: Fri Oct 24 2003 - 07:28:34 PDT 

Message-Id: <sf98d4bd.048@smtp-gw.seq.org>
Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2003 07:28:34 -0700
From: "Christopher Reese" <creese@seq.org>
Subject: Re: pinhole total thermal energy question

Temperature is a measure of the AVERAGE kinetic energy of an
atom/molecule in a substance. That average equates to a certain
temperature. The total thermal energy is based on how much of a
substance. You are right about KE times how many molecules. But the
total has a lot to do with how much. Paul Hewitt uses the example of a
cup of hot coffee and an iceberg. The coffee has more average KE
(higher temp), but the iceberg has more total energy because there is so
much more of it, although each individual molecule has less average
KE.

I hope this helps

Christopher Reese
Science Teacher
Woodside High School
199 Churchill Ave
Woodside, CA 94062
www.seq.org/~creese
650-367-9750 x8660

>>> stf-lmorton@vom.com 10/23/03 03:51PM >>>
Pinholers,
In my 8th grade physical science class yesterday I was trying describe
the difference between temperature and total thermal energy. If the
total thermal energy is equal to, or proportional to, the product of
the
number of atoms times the kinetic energy of the atoms, how does this
effect the total for those objects that are at a fraction of 1 Kelvin?
Any help for myself or my curious 8th grader?
Lou Morton
St. Francis Solano School

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe from pinhole, send an email to
requests@exploratorium.edu
with the words 'unsubscribe pinhole' (without the quotes) in the
SUBJECT
of the email.

To subscribe to the digest and only get 1 combined message a day, send
an
email to requests@exploratorium.edu with the words 'subscribe digest
pinhole' (without the quotes) in the SUBJECT of the email.

Check out what your colleagues have written on Pinhole in the Pinhole
archives at: http://saturn.exploratorium.edu/ti/alumni/pinhole.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date view Thread view Subject view Author view Attachment view

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Mon Aug 02 2004 - 12:05:32 PDT