How about Mechanisms of Metal Cooling in a Vacuum?

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travelalfred
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If you put a piece of very hot metal in cold water the heat in the metal will transfer to the water until both are the same temperature. So the system water-metal still has the same initial energy.

So my question is how does the piece of metal cool if it is put on a perfect vacuum.

Is it electromagnetic waves that the metal emits or something like that?
 
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travelalfred said:
If you put a piece of very hot metal in cold water the heat in the metal will transfer to the water until both are the same temperature. So the system water-metal still has the same initial energy.

So my question is how does the piece of metal cool if it is put on a perfect vacuum.

Is it electromagnetic waves that the metal emits or something like that?

Same way the sun transfers its heat energy to the Earth - radiant, electromagnetic energy. A large part of such energy resides in the infrared spectrum of the EM radiation.

Zz.
 
Heat transfers via conduction, convection or radiation. Only the last is available in a perfect vacuum. Wikipedia likely has discussions on each.
 
Borek said:
What about sublimation? :-p
You mean ablation? Or I guess evaporation.

That is the removal of the material itself, carrying away heat with it. I guess, technically, that is simply moving material around, not actually removing heat from the material.
 
I mean http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sublimation_(chemistry ) - so your second guess is correct.

If I have a hot piece of metal in vacuum and it loses part of the energy by evaporating itself, I would call it part of the cooling process, just like evaporation is part of the cooling process of the tea I have on my desk. This is just semantics and it depends on what we understand by "cooling piece of metal".
 
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