 Quote by rollingstein
What confuses me is how come the OP's original equation does not have a diffusion term at all? Shouldn't k, Cp and density always occur in combination (i.e. Diffusivity) in the solutions of the heat equation?
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Two reasons. First of all, in the OP's relationship, κ (kappa) is the thermal diffusivity, not, as he stated, the thermal conductivity k. Secondly, the term involving Q is not quite right. The units don't properly give temperature. I'm too lazy to look up what the correct expression for what this term should be, but, at the very least, there should be a k (thermal conductivity) in the denominator (if U has units of temperature and Q has units of energy). I'm guessing that the denominator should be a constant times [itex]kt\sqrt{\kappa t})[/itex]. This would give the correct units for temperature.