Before you read this, I suggest you read post 16.35. In post 16.34 we saw that heat flows spontaneously from hot things to cold things – this leads to the idea of entropy that was discussed in more detail in posts 16.35 and 16.38. Conduction (post 19.14) is one mechanism for the flow of heat.… Continue reading 19.18 Convection of heat

Before you read this, I suggest you read the first 8 paragraphs of post 18.6. In previous posts, we have seen how differential equations (post 19.10) can be used to represent diffusion (post 19.15), the conduction of heat (post 19.15) and the behaviour of waves (post 19.12). We also saw how a differential equation could… Continue reading 19.17 Computer modelling – the simple harmonic oscillator

Before you read this, I suggest you read posts 18.26 and 19.15. In post 18.26, we saw that particles that are free to move in a medium (like molecules in a solution) will spontaneously spread to achieve an even concentration; this process is called diffusion. In post 19.15, we saw that, for diffusion in one… Continue reading 19.16 Solution of the diffusion equation