Category: Author: Charles Xie
As the 18th century British chemist Sir Humphry Davy put it, “nothing tends so much to the advancement of knowledge as the application of a new instrument.” True for infrared imaging, especially when it is used as an educational tool to advance …
The following are two Energy2D simulations that compare convection and conduction, which should run within this page if you have installed Java and Java applets are enabled with your browser. The first one shows the case of natural convection. The seco…
Metals feel colder because they conduct heat faster, not because they are really “colder.” This is often a misconception from students. A very simple IR experiment may dispel this misconception by visualizing what is going on when you touch a piec…
Figure 1: Designing a building withEnergy3D.We have come close to release an alpha version of Energy3D, a computational building science laboratory for simulating energy flow and designing energy efficiency. This program will allow you to design a buil…
Figure 1. An IR image of a freshwatercup and a saltwater cup after an icecube was added to each.Will an ice cube melt faster in freshwater or saltwater? Why do we salt the road in water? How does an iceberg melt and how might it affect the ocean curren…
Figure 1. A page with some colorstrips under a table lamp. Click theimage to enlarge it to see the details.We all know black objects absorb more light energy than white ones. What about red, green, blue, and any other colors? With an infrared (IR) came…
Figure 1. A top view of a floatingice cube.If you have done a convection demo using a container of water and some ink, you may have had to change the water after each demo since the ink had diffused everywhere, which may make the convection pattern les…
Figure 1. The salinity gradient and temperature gradient observed in anopen cup of saturated saltwater.This is the fifth follow-up of the blog article: “A perfect storm in a cup of salt water?” This investigation focused on the…
Figure 1. Two shallow plastic containers. The left one holds a lot of salt and the right one is plain water. A small amount of water was added to the left one.This is the fourth followup of the blog article: “A p…
This is the third followup of the blog article: “A perfect storm in a cup of salt water?”I woke up last night with a perfect explanation for the mysterious temperature gradient observed in a saturated salt solution. It is the recrystallization of salt …