The Physics
Hypertextbook
Opus in profectus

Convection

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Problems

practice

  1. Write something.
  2. Write something else.
  3. Write something different.
  4. Write something completely different.

conceptual

  1. These three conceptual questions are a part of a larger worksheet (heat-transfer.pdf).
    1. Describe a food preparation activity that involves heat transfer by convection and explain how the rate of this heat transfer is controlled by the behavior of or the decisions made by the cook.
    2. Describe how a typical house in your neighborhood loses heat to or gains heat from the environment by convection and explain how the rate of this heat transfer is controlled by the behavior of its occupants or by the way in which the building was constructed.
    3. Describe how animals lose heat to or gain heat from their environment by convection and explain how the rate of this heat transfer is controlled through physiological or behavioral adaptations.
  2. Candle flames on Earth are tall, thin, and tapered. What shape would a candle flame have in a zero g environment (like that found inside an orbiting space station)? How does the volume of a zero g candle flame compare to the volume of the flame on an identical candle on Earth? Explain your reasoning. (This experiment has actually been done, so the answers are not hypothetical.)
  3. Nuclear weapons, large conventional explosives, and volcanoes (under the right circumstances) produce mushroom clouds. Why does this happen?
  4. Plate tectonics of the Earth's crust is driven by convection in the mantle below.
    1. In what direction is the Earth's mantle moving at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge or East African Rift, where the plates are diverging?
    2. In what direction is the Earth's mantle moving at the Mariana Trench or the Peru-Chile Trench, where one plate is subducting under another.