Is Science an Amalgamation?(revised)
An essay by Salifu Mutaru
So I now have two-thirds of the metal coil of a heater submerged into water in a plastic jug, ready to prepare a cup of coffee. I need just a cup, not the whole volume of water in the jug. I need the water faster to get me reading and sipping. When will the full jug of water get hot? Hmmm. I'm not a scientist, but can I think through this? Can science answer this?
I was silent for a while. I was not talking but building a set of thoughts and imagination about how to get my cup of hot water before the whole jug of water gets hot.
Water is made up of tiny independent units called molecules. Each water molecule carries within itself two atoms of hydrogen bonded to an atom of oxygen. The convection currents according to the thermodynamics of a fluid explain: when heating fluids, molecules closer to the source of heat attain a higher energy which causes their acceleration and displacement from their original position of random vibrational motion, just as the reverse will do the opposite (a moving particle generates heat directly proportional to its momentum). When the water molecules attain a higher temperature after absorbing heat energy, the molecules expand and bear less density.
A bit of chemistry here, but physics takes over again. The expanded molecules, having a lesser density can not remain at the same depth with the fairly cold molecules; rather they will have to float over the cold molecules (a body will float when its density is lesser than the density of the fluid in which it is placed and would displace - the principle of floatation). So in time I should have the water just below the surface getting hot before the molecules at the bottom.
I expected my pondering to come up true but it was four minutes already, and the water only fairly warm. Then it hit me; if the molecules around the heater gain energy, bounce around, and float up to the surface, then the molecules remaining very close to the heater should themselves attain greater energy which may affect my expectation. If I’m right, then those molecules might be escaping to the surface carrying along with them all the heat they absorbed. The convectional currents are causing the movements of the energetic water molecules to help heat my water, but again they are causing the very heated molecules I needed for my coffee to escape.
