Thermal emittance
Thermal emittance is like playing hot potato with your friends. You know when you have a hot potato and you quickly pass it to your friend and it feels warm on their hands? Well, imagine that the hot potato is really just heat that is trying to escape from something that is hot, like a stove.
When something is hot, it wants to release its heat to become cooler. This heat can be lost in different ways like by conduction, radiation or by convection. Thermal emittance is the ability of an object to lose heat by radiation, which is just like the hot potato passing from one person to another.
Different objects have different thermal emittance values. Just like some potatoes are hotter than others, some objects are better able to release heat than others. Some objects like metals are good at reflecting heat and have a low thermal emittance value, which means they are not very good at releasing heat. While other objects like black paint are good at absorbing heat and have a high thermal emittance value, which means they can release heat quickly.
By understanding the thermal emittance of objects, scientists and engineers can design materials that are better at either retaining or releasing heat to improve the performance of many everyday things like homes, cars, buildings, and even space shuttles!
When something is hot, it wants to release its heat to become cooler. This heat can be lost in different ways like by conduction, radiation or by convection. Thermal emittance is the ability of an object to lose heat by radiation, which is just like the hot potato passing from one person to another.
Different objects have different thermal emittance values. Just like some potatoes are hotter than others, some objects are better able to release heat than others. Some objects like metals are good at reflecting heat and have a low thermal emittance value, which means they are not very good at releasing heat. While other objects like black paint are good at absorbing heat and have a high thermal emittance value, which means they can release heat quickly.
By understanding the thermal emittance of objects, scientists and engineers can design materials that are better at either retaining or releasing heat to improve the performance of many everyday things like homes, cars, buildings, and even space shuttles!