WHAT IS HEAT?

Heat, put simply, is the vibration of molecules in a substance. Even in solid objects the molecules that
make them up move around. The hotter an object is, the more the molecules jump and jive. When they
are very excited, they will even break the solid structure and the substance then undergoes a phase shift
from solid to liquid. Similarly when the molecular motion is too vigorous for the liquid phase, the
substance enters the gaseous phase.

It's possible for different areas of an object to have different heat levels. The difference between the hot
part of an object and the cold part is called its "thermal gradient". When a molecule vibrates it passes
along a little of its exuberance to neighboring molecules. They too begin to vibrate but the original
molecule now vibrates a little less because some of its excitement has been taken by its neighbors. This
is how heat spreads through a substance.

The ability of an object to move heat from one part of itself to another is called "thermal conductivity".
It depends on the substance the object is made of. Certain substances like metals pass heat very readily.
That means when a metal molecule (atom) vibrates, its neighbors quickly begin to vibrate too. If a
substance doesn't pass heat well, it can be used as thermal insulation. The surface atoms (or molecules)
vibrate, but nearby atoms aren't as apt to start.

CONDUCTION

Transferring heat from one object to another is as simple as passing the molecular vibration from one
object to another. As you can imagine, the most basic method is "conductive heat transfer". Simply
place the two objects in contact with each other, and the molecular vibrations from one object will case
the molecules in the other object to begin vibrating.

The thermal conductivity of the objects involved plays a big part in how much heat is transferred. As a
general rule, solids have the highest heat conductivity. Liquids have less conductivity because in most
liquids the molecules are farther apart than in solids. Since the molecules are more spread out, vibration
in one of them isn't as likely to spread to nearby molecules. Gasses have the poorest thermal
conductivity because their molecules are even more spread out.

When the transfer medium is a fluid (i.e., a liquid or a gas) you have a slightly different form called
convective heat transfer. This is the notion of a "coolant" that "carries away" heat. Convective heat
transfer is what cools your car engine by circulating water through the hot parts and then through the
radiator where it is transferred to the air.

The air around us plays a big part in our everyday encounters with conductive heat transfer. The science
of meteorology is largely based on the heat transfer properties of earth's atmosphere. The
temperatures reported daily are the temperatures of the air at various places around the earth. The
earth's atmosphere is the primary conductor of heat in our daily experiences.

RADIATION

Conductive heat transfer is pretty easy to understand. But there's another important phenomenon.
Excited molecules release electromagnetic radiation (e.g., visible light, infrared light, x-rays, microwaves,
or radio waves). This release of energy slows their vibration and helps them shed heat.

Conversely, when a molecule absorbs electromagnetic radiation, it becomes more excited and vibrates
faster. It's easy to see that by using this mechanism objects can transfer heat between each other
without even touching. This mechanism is called "radiative heat transfer". Objects transfer heat
between each other through electromagnetic radiation.

Electromagnetic radiation includes visible light. We often see hot objects giving off electromagnetic
radiation in the visible spectrum. The wavelength of light emitted depends on the substance and how
vigorously it is heated. Most hot objects will emit light in the infrared spectrum. This is why infrared
sensors are used in security applications to detect the presence of warm bodies where they should not
be.

PUTTING IT TOGETHER

These two forms of heat transfer account for just about everything we observe relating to heat.

The sun warms the earth through radiative heat transfer. Vast amounts of electromagnetic radiation all
across the spectrum travels from the sun and hits the earth. The various substances on earth (dirt, rocks,
water, concrete, sand, etc.) absorb this energy and their heat level is raised. They transmit that heat
through conductive heat transfer to the surrounding atmosphere, and eventually to us.

The daily temperature is reported as air temperature. On a pleasant summer day, the air temperature
may be 80 F (21 C). But the various solid surface substances on earth may have been quite a bit hotter
that day. Have you ever walked barefoot on dark asphalt on a hot day? It usually feels very, very warm
to your feet. Since your body temperature is about 99 F (37 C), you know that pavement must be
considerably hotter than that, perhaps 150 F (52 C). This difference in surface temperature versus air
temperature is very important to discussing the lunar environment.

Place your hand near a hot object such as a pan on the stove. You can feel the heat from it, even though
you aren't physically touching it. The air between your hand and the pan is conducting the heat between
the air and the pan. The farther you move your hand away, the less heat can be transmitted that
distance through the air.
If you've ever stood on a stage under full lighting, you realize how hot that can get. That's radiative heat
transfer -- the same as from the sun. The very hot coils inside the light bulb send out lots of
electromagnetic radiation which hits your skin. Absorbing this radiation heats your skin up, and you feel
it as heat.

Microwave ovens are a special case of this phenomenon. Microwave radiation is part of the
electromagnetic spectrum. It happens to be a wavelength that causes water molecules to vibrate
especially vigorously.

In space there is no air, so conductive heat transfer doesn't occur between objects that are not
physically touching. Only radiative heat transfer can occur. This is important for two reasons. First, you
can be very, very close to something that's very hot, and you won't feel a lot of heat. (Radiative heat
transfer typically moves less heat than conductive heat transfer.)
Also in space, objects take longer to cool off. This is because conductive heat transfer to the atmosphere
is the primary means for keeping things cool on earth. Objects in a vacuum can only get rid of heat
through radiative heat transfer, and since that moves less heat it isn't as good.

FINDING A HAPPY MEDIUM: THE STEADY STATE

So we have two means by which objects can acquire heat and pass it on to other objects. In practice, any
given object is both receiving heat and passing it on. If it acquires heat faster than it passes it on, it heats
up. If it passes it along faster than it receives it, it cools down. An object at a constant temperature is
receiving heat just as fast as it is getting rid of it. This is called "thermal equilibrium".

An object at equilibrium can still have a thermal gradient. Shine a bright light on an object. The side
facing the light will be heated by radiative heat transfer. The shaded side will still be cooler. But as long
as the temperature at each point in the object remains the same over time, the object is said to be at
equilibrium.

A more complicated version of this example would be a concrete highway on a still day. The sun warms
the pavement to perhaps 150 F (52 C). It would be hotter, but some of the heat is drawn away by the air
on top of it. The air may be cooler because it's less dense than the pavement -- say only 80 F (21 C). But
very close to the pavement it's significantly hotter. As long as the wind doesn't stir things up this system
will be at equilibrium even though we can observe several different temperatures at different places in
the system.

In space our ability to get rid of heat is limited. Since an object can only use radiative heat transfer and
not conductive heat transfer, it will absorb heat faster than it can radiate it. That means equilibrium
temperatures will be significantly higher for objects in a vacuum. The same concrete highway in a
vacuum may be heated to 250 F (121 C).
HEDGING THE BET

Intuitively we know that things in the shade don't heat up as much. Without the radiative heat transfer
from the sun, objects can only receive heat through conductive heat transfer. Since the vacuum of space
limits how we can get rid of heat, the best way to keep cool in space is not to be heated in the first
place. Fortunately the vacuum of space also limits how we can receive heat, so by reducing or
eliminating radiative heat transfer to an object, we can keep it cool.

Intuition tells us that wearing a black shirt on a sunny summer day is unwise. White colors prevail in
summer because they reflect away the electromagnetic radiation that heats us up. Similar principles
apply in space. Painting something flat black would cause it to absorb sunlight and heat up. Covering it
with reflective material has the opposite effect of reducing the absorption and keeping it from heating
up.

THE KELVIN SCALE

We use the Fahrenheit and Celsius temperature scales for everyday temperatures. But since they have
both positive and negative values, it makes them hard to use for scientific equations. And so when we
discuss heat transfer we use a special temperature scale called Kelvins. The Kelvin temperature of an
object is simply the number 273 added to its Celsius temperature. This makes all the temperature
measurements positive.

Why 273? Because scientists have shown that at -273 C, all molecular vibration ceases. That is, there is
no heat present in a substance at that temperature. Nothing can be colder than the complete absence
of molecular vibration, so -273 C (or 0 Kelvin) is called "absolute zero" -- the coldest an object can
possibly be. If that represents zero on our temperature scale, then no pesky negative numbers will
clutter up our calculations.

Calorie

The calorie is a pre-SI metric unit of energy. It was first defined by Nicolas Clément in 1824 as a unit of
heat, entering French and English dictionaries between 1841 and 1867. In most fields its use is archaic,
having been replaced by the SI unit of energy, the joule. However, in many countries it remains in
common use as a unit of food energy.
Definitions of a calorie fall into two classes:

The small calorie or gram calorie (cal) approximates the energy needed to increase the temperature of 1
gram of water by 1 °C. This is about 4.2 joules.

The large calorie, kilogram calorie or food calorie (Cal) approximates the energy needed to increase the
temperature of 1 kilogram of water by 1 °C. This is exactly 1000 small calories or about 4.2 kilojoules.

In scientific contexts, the name "calorie" refers to the gram calorie, and this unit has the symbol cal.
Metric prefixes are used with this name and symbol, so that the kilogram calorie is known as the
"kilocalorie" and has the symbol kcal. In other contexts, the kilocalorie is often referred to as a Calorie
(capital "C"), or just a calorie, and it has to be inferred from the context that the small calorie is not
intended. When referring to food energy, calorie refers to the large calorie.

In other words, 1 kcal = 1000 cal = 1 Cal

The conversion factor between calories and joules is numerically equivalent to the specific heat capacity
of liquid water (in SI units).

Heat Capacity

Heat capacity (usually denoted by a capital C, often with subscripts) is the measurable physical quantity
that characterizes the amount of heat required to change a body's temperature by a given amount. In
the International System of Units, heat capacity is expressed in units of joules per kelvin.

Derived quantities include the molar heat capacity, which is the heat capacity per mole of a pure
substance. Similarly, specific heat capacity (also called more properly "mass-specific heat capacity" or
more loosely "specific heat"), is the heat capacity per unit mass of a body. These quantities are
"intensive quantities". That is, they are not dependent on amount of material, but directly reflect the
type of material, as well as the physical conditions of heating.

Temperature reflects the average total kinetic energy of particles in matter. Heat is transfer of thermal
energy; it flows from regions of high temperature to regions of low temperature. Thermal energy is
stored as kinetic energy and, in molecules and solids, also as potential energy in the modes of vibration
or phonons. These represent degrees of freedom of movement for atoms. These degrees of freedom,
and sometimes others, contribute to the heat capacity of a thermodynamic system. As the temperature
approaches absolute zero, the specific heat capacity of a system also approaches zero. Quantum theory
can be used to quantitatively predict specific heat capacities in simple systems.