Comment on Air: Where did that bring you? Back to me.
Iron_Lynx@lemmy.world 9 months agoCounterpoint: at the boundary layers, right where the air touches the fins, the main mechanism for heat exchange is conduction. Ultimately, convection is just conduction, where the medium undergoing heat conduction is a moving fluid, which massively amplifies the rate of heat exchange.
Air is kinda shit at taking in heat through radiation, but fine at doing so via conduction and convection.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 9 months ago
The metal atoms in the fins don’t move into the air. They stay on the fins. The fins’ atoms have to transfer their kinetic energy via photon exchange to the atoms in the air.
So conduction is radiation at atomic distances.
Iron_Lynx@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Ah, I see we’re getting to the point where it’s hard to tell if we’re being philosophical or pedantic.