energy as iron and about half as much as air. Not only that,
but remember that air is far less dense than water, which
means that the amount of heat energy contained in a given
volume of air at a given temperature will be only a small
fraction of the amount of energy contained in the same
volume of water at the same temperature. That’s the reason
why you’ll get a bad burn by sticking your hand into a pot
of 212°F boiling water but you can stick your arm into a
212°F oven without a second thought (see “Experiment:
Temperature Versus Energy in Action,” here).
Confused? Let’s try an analogy.
Imagine the object being heated as a chicken coop
housing a dozen potentially unruly chickens. The
temperature of this system can be gauged by watching how
fast each individual chicken is running. On a normal day,
the chickens might be casually walking around, pecking,
scratching, pooping, and generally doing whatever chickens
do. Now let’s add a bit of energy to the equation by mixing
a couple cans of Red Bull in with their feed. Properly
pepped up, the chickens begin to run around twice as fast.
Since each individual chicken is running around at a faster
pace, the temperature of the system has gone up, as has the
total amount of energy in it.
Now let’s say we have another coop of the same size but
with double the number of chickens, thereby giving it
double the density. Since there are twice as many chickens,
it will take double the amount of Red Bull to get them all
running at an accelerated pace. However, even though the
final temperature will be the same (each individual chicken
is running at the same final rate as the first ones), the total
nandana
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