philip012

[continued] Thermal conductivity is its own intricate material property that depends on different methods of heat conduction in metals (and nonmetals (e.g., electrons vs. phonons). It may be the case that no useful relationship between them can be stated in broad terms for all materials. I'm curious to hear back what type of answer the lab instructor was looking for.

Was going to leave this on your thermal expansion / thermal conductivity thread:

##L## in the first equation represents a length exposed to a uniform ##\Delta T##, whereas ##L## in the second equation is the length over which a ##\Delta T## gradient is maintained. So it ends up being meaningless to try to combine them in this way. [continued]