How Does the Temperature of a Body in Space Change Over Time?

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Homework Help Overview

The original poster attempts to determine how the temperature of a body in space changes over time when exposed to sunlight. The problem involves concepts from thermodynamics and heat transfer, particularly focusing on the balance between absorbed solar power and emitted thermal radiation.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory, Mathematical reasoning, Assumption checking

Approaches and Questions Raised

  • Participants discuss the formulation of the temperature change equation, questioning the validity of the T^4 term related to blackbody radiation. There are attempts to integrate the equation and concerns about the implications of high initial temperatures on the results.

Discussion Status

Some participants suggest that numerical methods may be necessary to evaluate the integral, while others express uncertainty about the solvability of the equations presented. There is an ongoing exploration of mathematical identities and approximations related to the integration process.

Contextual Notes

Participants note issues with imaginary values arising from the integration when considering high temperatures, indicating potential constraints in the mathematical approach being used.

sid_galt
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I want to determine the temperature of a body in space exposed to the Sun as it varies with time.
I tried this.
Let A be the area exposed to the Sun and 2A the total area of the body. Let 1380 W/m2 be the power of the sunlight falling on the body. Let [tex]\sigma[/tex] be the Boltzmann constant, [tex]\epsilon[/tex] the emissivity of the body and T the temperature at a a particular instant of time, m the mass of the body and C the specific heat constant. Then
[tex] \displaystyle\frac{dT}{dt} = \displaystyle\frac{1380A - 2\sigma\epsilon A T^4}{mC}[/tex]
[tex] \displaystyle\frac{mC}{A}\int\displaystyle\frac{1}{1380 - 2\sigma\epsilon T^4}dT = \int dt[/tex]
I tried to integrate it on integrals.wolfram.com taking Boltzmann constant as 5.6E-8 and emissivity as 0.7. The result was
[tex]\displaystyle\frac{0.156942mC}{A}(\arctan[0.00230862T]+arctanh[0.00230862T]) + C' = t[/tex]

C' is here the integration constant

I don't know how to proceed further. Can anyone help please?
Thank you
 
Last edited:
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Can anyone help please?
 
Are you sure it's T^4? My thermodynamics knowledge is limited but I thought the rate of heat transmition was proportional to deltaT, I might be wrong though. Otherwise, there is no analytic solution to the lower equation for T.
Edit - nevermind, it's blackbody radiation. Yeah, sorry, can't figure out what's wrong with either your physics or math. The last equation is not solvable for T.
 
Last edited:
But there must be someway to find temperature as a function of time for a body in space exposed to the Sun.
 
sid_galt said:
But there must be someway to find temperature as a function of time for a body in space exposed to the Sun.

Yes, there is. You can evaluate your integral numerically.
 
But how do I integrate high temperatures into the equation, say if I want to evaluate it for a body with an initial temperature of 1000 K.
My Arctanh would give an unreal value for all temperatures higher than 434.78 K.
 
if you notice that ArcTan[x]+ArcTanh[x] for x > 1 always give some value a - 1.5708i , well , make it so your integration constant takes out the imaginary part.
Edit- more specifically
for x>1
ArcTanh[x] = ArcTanh[1/x] -1/2pi*i

Edit: Another approximation:
for small x
ArcTanh[x] = ArcTan[x]

another nice identity:
(you might be able to solve for this actually)
[tex]tan^{-1}(x) +tan^{-1}(y) = tan^{-1}(\frac{x+y}{1-xy})[/tex]

Last edit - I tried all the above, it doesn't work (not even with shoddy approximations).
 
Last edited:
µ³ said:
if you notice that ArcTan[x]+ArcTanh[x] for x > 1 always give some value a - 1.5708i , well , make it so your integration constant takes out the imaginary part.

I didn't notice that before. Thanks for the help.
 

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