all right. let's begin.

last time, we talked about, hey, what's gonna happen to a hole if you heat it up? will the hole get bigger, smaller or stay the same? and we all tried it with our kid sister's ring and we found out what, gang? bigger. smaller. you see, right now, it goes through. with a little effort, it goes through, yeah? i'm not gonna take the time to heat up the ball. i'd waste your time because you know the ball would get bigger and no way it would go through. i'm gonna heat, instead, the ring. you get that ring nice and hot. is the ring expanding? yep. yeah. yeah, it's expanding. how about the hole? is the hole expanding? see, a lot of people thing this. a lot of people reason that the hole is gonna-- it's gonna expand this way and expand in this way 'cause the ring is gonna get fatter. will that ring get fatter? it turns out it will. so they think this part would expand out here

and this part in here, and the hole gets smaller. but lo and behold, it's appreciably bigger. so the hole does get bigger, gang. did that kind of confirm your reasoning anyway? yeah. did you find out-- how many people said in their homework, "yeah, the hole does get bigger"? show of hands. how many people are a little bit unhappy today? they kind of said something else? can we still be friends? can we? can we? here's the way i look at that, gang. oh, man. no friends today. no friends today? sometimes it's not good to give the answers, huh? if we take our ring and we cut it up into four pieces, gang, four pieces, and if i put even any one of those pieces in the oven, would it get bigger? yeah. would it expand and maybe look like this? no way. it's gonna expand and look like that.

and this side here is longer in an expanded state than like this. so take them apart and look at it and you can kind of see it. or take your ring and open it up like this. is it gonna get fatter? yes, it's gonna get fatter. so it expands up to here maybe, out to here maybe, yeah? but that's not the end of the story. you see, we're so busy thinking about what happens like this, huh, that we forget it's expanding this way, too. and it expands lengthwise as well. and lengthwise, we'll see it expands out to here. and i submit to you that this dotted line on the top is longer than the solid line below. and that dotted line on the top represents the new inner circumference. so every part of the ring, the thickness, the width, circumference, outer, inner, everything expands by the same rate if the heating is uniform and it pretty well was here. so the hole gets larger, okay? cool. yeah. you've got a jar of peanut butter,

you can't open it up and you give to a muscle brawn-type. he still can't open it up. so what do you do and if it's handed to you? you take it, and put it in a stove upside down momentarily or put it under the hot water. doesn't that metal lid expand? does it make it tighter against the glass or looser? looser. and you--hey, mind, mind. hey. brawn one thing, wonderful, but the mind, too. see? so you think and you can open it up by just eating it up. it turns out the whole darn thing will expand whole and all. sure, you know, they're kind of nice thing, too. you have thermostats at home? here's a piece of metal, two kinds: brass, steel. does everything expand the same rate, gang? no. let's see. the steel is on the top. the brass is on the bottom. which part expanded more? the brass. the brass expanded more and pushed the steel right into a curve. you see that? and that's the basis of a thermostat.

thermostat acts like that. you know what i'm saying? notice we have a wooden handle on here. why do we have a wooden handle on this demonstration apparatus? this metal here, i can just barely hold it there. why is it i just didn't have the metal and hold that in there? why, gang? because the metal part would get hot and the wooden part wouldn't. and that wooden part wouldn't. but why--and what are we gonna talk about today? heat transfer. heat transfer. and the first kind of heat transfer begins with a c and what is it? conduction. conduction. and it turns out that heat would have been conducted to my hand had i held it here and it would have burned me, that's because metal is a very good conductor of heat. how come i get a wooden handle, gang? because the wood is a very poor conductor of heat. but let's not be so negative. instead of saying poor conductor, we can say good insulator. see, see, you can see it the other way around, okay? it turns out in the metal, all metals got a lose electrons.

and those electrons, when you start to heat this up, you--how many people say, "oh, when you put that in a flame, those electrons just kind of hang loose on it?" those electrons are bopping around and those electrons-- hit their neighbors-- and that energy cascades all down the middle. so it turns out that things with lose electrons are good heat conductors. later on, we're gonna learn things with good-- with lose electrons are good electrical conductors. and how many say, "oh, that's probably a coincidence"? it's not a coincidence. it's a good electrical conductor for the same reason. those lose electctrons can flowight through a piece of metal, gang and when that--now, we're talking about electricity. we'll be talking about that soon, yeah? but for now, those metal-- those little electrons will bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, which are lose in metals and carry that energy right along. so some things conduct better than other things. piece of wood, very, very good insulator. this wood is a good insulator at any temperature. this wood is a good insulator even if it's very, very hot.

yep. did you ever reach in to a hot oven and grabbed on to a frying fan that's about maybe 400 degrees fahrenheit? you're gonna cook some food or something, you got a frying p in there that's all iron. ever be reaching there with your bare hand and grabbed the iron pan? if you ever had, you can show that today, you'd be tattooed, all right? you're gonna burn yourself. isn't that right? but could you reach into that oven and grab a pan if it had a wooden handle and grab it momentarily? you can do that. you can do that. you know why? because t--that wood is hot. that's the same temperature as the metal. but not very much energy is gonna conduct from the wood to your hand, so you can safely hold it. you cado that. ever see these people walking at hot coals after they've paid more than $300 for some sort of a course that teaches you how to have self-confidence in yourself? and then the test of that self-confidence is they say, "we are gna violate the laws of physics "and show you that mind over matter. "that $300 you've spent for that 15-minute session

"is gonna pay off ecause we're gonna apply those techniques "and we' gonna show that you can walk with bare feet on hot coals." and so the people do that. they take off their shoes, bare feet, they step on the hot coals. they walk across and they think they have violated physics. gang, those are hot coals of what? wood. wood. and that wood is verhot, isn't it? how much of that heat in that wood is gonna get to the feet? what does it depend upon? not only the temperature of the wood but something else. begin with a c, end with onductivity. see if you can put it together. what is it, gang? conductivity. it's conductivity. and that conductivity of the wood is good or not so good? not so good. not so good. so when you step with your barefoot on that hot coal, there is a heat transfer. but a lot or a little? what the answer begin with, gang? l. okay, l. okay. so it's a little l, right? and so only it makes sense, little, little heat. only a little bit of heat will get to your foot and you can-- no, you're not gonna stand on one place there, okay? you're not gonna reach in that oven and you're hanging on that wooden handle.

honey, you're gonna be hurt. but you can grab it and pull it out. boom. and you can step, step, step, step across red hot coals of wood without harm. it's even better if your feet are wet. once--remember when you were a little kid and you wanted to know if the iron was hot and your mother says, "touch it and see"? now, if your mother doesn't care very much of you, she says, "touch it and see." but if your mother really loves you, she says, "before you touch it, wetting your hand." [makes sous] right? [makes sounds] that little sound? [makes sounds] what's that little sound? we're getting a chapter ahead. you guys don't know about this. it turns to steam. how many say, "oh, don't take any energy to turn to steam. it just happens to do it." come on. the energy it took to turn that to that little puff of steam is ergy that did not go to your hand. so it's better if you walk across those coals and you got wet feet because then it'll be even safer. so a homework assignment this weekend. every one take off their shoes and socks, get some hot coals, pour them all over your front lawn

and get out there and do it, all right? okay? actually, some people say, "anything i can do for extra credit?" there you ar and take a photograph and 'll put the photo in the next book, okay, becausi need to get a new photo of someo doing that, all right? you're sitting in that tables. part of your table is metal and part of your table is wood. i want you to all put your hand on the wooden pa. oh, go ahead. it's all right. all right? now, take the hand off and touch the metal part underneath, the metal part of your table, okay? now which is hotter, the wood part or the metal part? wood. that is kind of an ambiguous question, gang. is it not? which has the higher temperature, the wood or the metal? try it again. same. the same. yeah, the same. but if you just feel it, you'd say what? oh, the metal is colder. is the metal colder?

it feels colder because it's a better conductor. your body temperature is higher than the temperature of everything else in this room. and temperature is higher over your hand than that which you touch. gang, there's a heat flow, an energy flow that we call heat. it goes from high temperature to low. and when you did that, when you touched the wood, there's a heat difference but conductivity not so much. how much energy flowed from your hand when you touched the wood? a lot or a little? a little. how much flowed from your hand when you touched the metal? a lot or a little? a lot. the other l, right? a lot. and it has to do with the conductivity. it kinda makes sense, that stuff, doesn't it, condtivity? kinda neat stuff. hey, i'll show you something kinda nice forhat. here's a piece of iron. good conductor? yeah here's a piece of wood. good conductor? no. no. it turns out wood is a very, very poor conductor as wve talked about. i'm gonna put a piece of paper around this iron.

i'm gonna light up my torch again. paper doesn't light on fire, gang. but if the paper is taken out like this, and it's flamin'. put it against the iron, it goes out. it's charred. that part lit up. oops. call the fire marshal. but what's going on here, gang? well, let's try it with wood let's try it with wood. our test. be checkin' the neighbor and see if the neighboknows why that paper didn't light. did yoever read the book by ray bradbury called fahrenheit 451? yes. that 451 is what? that's the temperature in fahrenheit degrees at which paper burns.

that was about a book-burning book, yeah? watch this, gang. fire city. thathing is burning up. look at that all right. okay. why with the wood but not with the metal? neighbor time, neighbor time. okay. what would be the answer, gang? heat transfer is-- most of the energy here went to what, the paper or the metal? metal. the metal. how much was lt in the paper? none. and before i can get the paper up to 451, i've got to make that very, very good conductor back there at 451, too. and that takes a lot and lot of energy to do. and so you didn't see the paper ignite. never got to 451. this is considerably more than 451 degrees, considerably more. when i wrapped it around the wood, look the wood is all scarred now. look at that. you saw the paper light up. why?

because i didn't have to heat up all the wood to 451, just the surface. see? just the surface. and it--right up easily. but around--on a piece of metal, all the heat is conducted all throh here. let's try something similar. this time, i've got-- oh, i'll take a paper cup rst. paper cup, some wate okay, my flame aga. there we go. water in the cup. then, you know, fire and all, no flames at all, gang. [laughter] except the edge, okay? but i can st about bri that to a boil. and yet, if i take a cup like this--okay. any fire marshals around? okay.

you kinda get the idea. ain't that nice? and this over here, it turns out just the edge you see there, the edge does not in touch with the water. but the same type thing is happening here. not so much because of the conductivity of the water. water turns out to be not a good conductor. but something else is going on here, gang. and what is it? transfer. oh, i can read your minds. i can read your minds. [laughter] you're all saying, "but, gang, you're taking a fluid which has an enormous specific heat, hewitt." and if you wanna increase the temperature of that, honey, you gotta put a lot of calories. and you got hardly left any leftover for the water-- i mean, for the-- what's the outde made of? beginning with a p? paper. okay. so it turns out, yeah, most of my energy is going-- being absorbed by the water. and it's a little bit warmer but not very much. i'll show you something really neat. i'm gonna put an ice cube at the bottom of this. oops. i hope i can get an ice cube in there. oh, get in there, son of a gun. uh-oh.kay.

see that hunk of ice down there, gang? and i'm gonna wedge that ice in there with this paper clip 'cause i'm gonna pour some water in there. and i don't want the ice to float. and i got the ice wedged down there. now i'm gonna fill it up with some water. [laughter] okay, that was the cup that i didn't have the water in, yeah? okay. now what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna get this going again. and-- [laughter] oh, please. [laughter] i'm gonna bring the top to a boil. and the ice cube at the ttom is still intact. look at that, gang. the water is boiling.

down below-- do you see the piece of ice? the ice is still in there. ain't that right, gang? do you see that? so that shows that water is a pretty poor conductor. remember we talked last time about the idea of the four-degree water at the bottom of the lake? and the summertime comes, why doesn't that whole lake all heat right up? it tns out that water will not conduct the energy, that sunlight down very far at all. water is not a good conductor of heat. it's a poor conductor. and you saw that here. i boiled the top, and that heat did not conduct downward to melt the ice. [makes sound] interesting, interesting, interesting this world we live in, yeah? hmm. it turns out that air is a good conductor or a poor conductor? poor.

it turns out it's a poor conductor. and aren't you glad? because what if air were a very, very good conductor? how would you feel all the te? it begins with a c, ends with old. put it together, gang. cold. you would feel cold. let's suppose the air was as good conducting as like a piece of metal. do you ever stand on a night at home and lean up against a metal door? it's cold to the touch. but that metal door has the same temperature as the air around you. so be glad that air is a poor conductor and a good insulator. in fact, when you wanna keep yourself warm when you're gonna go campin', that sort of thing, don't you get a down-filled sleeping bag? what's all the down for? it's holding air in one place. it keeps the air from circulating. and that down will just hold the-- how about animals? u wonder about the animals. how do they make it up on the snow-covered mountains? they're covered with fur. and that fur puffs up and what-- guess what it holds inside? it begins with "a," ends with an r. air. and that air is a very, very good insulator. so most of the things that keep you very, very warm in a cold climate like that which insulates like styrofoam, yeah?

or spun glass or things like that. they're all what? they are things that hold air. see these thermal underwear they have now? the thermal underwear-- you look at a thermal underwear, and there's like a net, like fishnet. and you put that on and that's gonna keep you warm? but over that fishnet underwear, you put a regular t-shirt. and now what's trapped between your skin and that t-shirt? air. it begins with a "a." air. all right. it ends with r. air. air. okay. and can that air circulate? now if the air warmed up and just went away, then you get cold again, see? but it's all held there by these little netting. that's what it is. when that stuff first came out, i looked at that and said, "what?" 'cause, you know, "this is gonna keep warm, honey." and they show you something with all these holes. [laughter] all these holes? that doesn't sound right. but i--wait a minute, wait a minute. i said, "i know what that is." it begins th a p. i mean, begins with an f." what is it? physics. oh, you don't be knowin'? physics. [laughter] oh, yeah. yeah. let's talk about convection. convection, the other form of heat transfer. first, conduction then convection. convection is what, gang?

convection is the moving of fluids. for example, if you heat part of your bathtub up, pretty soon this part is hot, too. a little conduction going on there, but mostly the water is kinda moving around in currents. and so when you carry heat from one place to another by virtue of currents in a fluid, we just have a name for that, convecon. and it has an enormous-- a lot to do with the climates of the world. isn't that true? convection. so we get convection currents. you hear that term a lot. it turns out that warm air, when warm air rises, warm air rises-- somethin' happens to the warm air when it rises. do you know, guys, do you know why that wardoes rise, by the way? if you're paintin' a ceiling and you're all the way at the top paintin', you'll find out it's a lot warmer at the top of that ladder than if you're laying tile on the floor. then someone says, "how come it's so warm up there?" "oh, it's warm up there because warm air rises." somebody say to you, "well, how come warm air rises?"

and you, "well, it's--warm air is less densthan the other air so it rises." well, somebody say, "how come it's less dee, it rises?" "well, because it's less dense." [laughter] "well, come on, come on. why does less dense air go up?" "well, there's probably no reason for that. it's just a rule, man. it's a rule, okay?" less--why does less dense air rise, gang? it expands. and yoknow why a why? because-- if a bag of air goes up and-- take air and put it in a great, big plastic baggie. now can you see it? where's the greater air pressure? in the bottom of that baggie or on the top? top. bottom. on the bottom. and if that air is expanded, what happens to its density? less dense. so a greater density air from below will push on that pocket of ai harder than the air above, and it will be buoyed, right? it should go up, up, up, up. but, you know, we can understand this from another point of view, and that's thinking small. and let's think small. you got one molecule. and let's suppose that molecule is hot and it stays hot.

to say that one molecule is hot is to say it's moving around faster th the molecules around it. now, here's a thought experiment. if you have a molecule that moves faster than all the others and you better go here-- [makes sound] ain't gonna hit all these other atoms, right? it's gonna hit. why would start to migrate upward? you know it would. before you know it, it will keep going up, up, up, up and all this hits, hits, hits. it keeps going up, up, up. it doesn't go down, it only goes up. doesn't only go up, but on the average it goes up. can you be thinking of a reason why? check your neighr. see if your neighbor can think of a reason why. okay, gang. let's look at this, thinking small, why is it that one molecule moving faster than any other and, by the way, a helium atom will do that. if you take a helium atom and let it go in this room, it'll continually go faster than any other molecule. does anyone know why? why would helium molules move faster?

you guys know any helium in atmosphere find its way at the top? it's going faster. helium is the fastest moving molecule of any group of molecules around. in fact, helium stays in the atom form, just one atom. don't gang up into molecules, and a helium atom is very fast. and let's see if we can see why. let's suppose we have some helium gas in e room here. wod that have the same temperature as the air in the room? let's have a helium balloohere and it's in contact with the air in the room. won't it come to the same temperature? yes, it will. the air in this room all has the same temperature. that doesn't mean every molecule is going exactly as fast as the other. it means on the average they are. the average kinetic energy per molecule is the same for everything that has the same temperature. so helium atoms move faster on the average than others because they are... smaller. let's use the equation to guide our thinking.

remember we talked about kinetic energy before, gang. let's get in a little physics here. now, this is kinda-- this is a little deep physics. that's the expression, kinetic energy. that is also proportional to temperature. to say two volumes of gas have the same temperature is to say those two volumes of gas have the same kinetic energy for their molecules. so the kinetic energy is the same. now, a helium atom has a very, very tiny mass and compared to the other maes like the oxygen and nitrogen, they have large masses. so i could put the oxygen and nitrogen like that. and if that has the same energy as the helium, but the helium has only a little mass, so what must be the end of the story, gang? check your neighbor. what's gonna happen? if this is gonna be the same as this, what's the v gonna be? so little things that have the same kinetic energy as big things must necessarily be going faster.

i can put it to you this way. let's suppose there's a mouse and an elephant running down the street and i tell you that the mouse and the elephant have the same kinetic energy. now, to say they have the same kinetic energy is to say when they hit the barn door, they'll do the same work, the same damage. from the fact that an elephant and a mouse, honey, running down, doing the same damage and hit the barn door, is that enough information for you to say which is going faster? now, which one's going faster? that mouse is a bullet, okay? it'll have to be like a bullet to do the same damage. so it turns out little things will go faster than big things if they have the same energy. that tells you a lot, gang. that tells you why there's no helium. why you go-- you don't get helium. all the helium atoms are going so fast, theye going at escape speed. they escape the earth. and what helium there is in the very, very top, it's all gone. it goes out. the helium you get in your balloons, that comes from under the ground when they're mining gas, they get helium in there too. later on, we're gonna learn about

where that helium comes from. it comes from the radioactive decay of elements like uranium and radium. that's what it is, that's the alpha particles. so next time you see a kid walking down the street with a helium-filled balloon, say, "hey, radioactive decay waste." true or false? ends out true. that's right. that's what it is. yeah, pha particles, slowed down. yeah. - yeah, really? - yeah, really. yeah. it turns out when that warm air rises-- and it rises, by the way, because--i didn't mention that. it rises because it's in migrations. every time it happens to be going down, does it see a lot of atoms or a little bit? a lot to bounce off. when it happens to be going up, does it see a lot or a little? not quite so many as down. so when it's banging-- [makes sound] won't it finally bumble to the regions of less pressure? and then go a little further-- [makes sound] bounce and comes back down, there's more underneath. so zillions and zillions of bounces per second, you know, [mes sound] find its way right to the top.

just like if you had a whole lot of people in the room and they're all dancing around to something and they're all crowed to one end of the room and you put some drunk in the middle who moves faster than anyone se. [laughter] and that drunk is out of it and you wanna go find that drunk-- and you look in the part of the room with a very, very few people. that drunk will just bumble right to the region of less opposition, very, very improbable he'd bumble to the-- where it's crowded 'cause every time he'd bump into a bunch of persons, they'd go further this way. and he'd keep, keep finding-- bounding, bounding, back, back, same with the molecule in the room. you know-- [makes sound] finally find itself at the top if it's faster moving than the others, see? but air doesn't do that and r cools off. when you light smoke, you light a fire, you see the smoke go up, yeah? but the smoke doesn't keep going forever. what's the smoke finally do? it finally settles off. and what's going on there? the smoke molecules have lost their energy. they've bumped into the other things. and all those bumping, they kind of slow down. and when they're going no faster than the other there, they'll just take on with that air, see? but helium will never slow down as slow as the other atoms

because it's got the same energy. it's got more speed. that make sense? you got some physics today, huh? so that's why helium is something that--huh? okay. that's not, by the way, why a helium-filled balloon goes up. the helium-filled balloon, it's all trapped. the helium-filled balloon goes up for a different reason: 'cause there's more pressure in the bottom than the top and the buoyancy is bigger than the weight 'cause it's very, very low density, see? that's a different idea, see? we're talking about now one little atom. doesn't make any sense to say one little atom being void, okay? it does get hit more from the below than above. but so does in every other kind of atom, but this kind of atom is moving so fast it migrates more than others and--find itself out there very, very quickly. i wanna show you guys something really dramatic. do you ever wonder when you take your friends, you go to the mountaintops and you go to the mountaintops

and up there the temperature is what? - cold. - it's cold. now, the mountaintops are closer to the sun. so your friend says, "gee, i sewe're closer to the sun. we should be a little warmer." and the higher you climb, the colder it gets. did you ever wonder why? is there anyone here that ever went up in the mountains and they get cold and didn't wonder why? i wanna see what you look like. stand up. everybody wonder why? yeah, we wonder how come it's cold up there, okay, and why is that? it's because when that rising air goes up, what does it do when it gets to regions of less and less pressure? cools. cools, but why does it cool? begin with a x. - expand. - expands. it expands just like a heliumilled balloon would expand, wouldn't it? and so when the air expands, then the air cools. hc?

i got a demonstration for you all to try right there at your seats. are you ready? everyone have a hand? t your hand in front of your mouth and with youmouth open, so when you breath-- so the air doesn't expand, i want you to blow. a little disruption right there. okay. now bring your mouth down really tight, so the air expands when it comes out. notice any difference in temperature? yeah. try it again, gang. open mouth. open mouth. now close mouth, so the air expands. okay, you wanna see that more dramatically? watch this. here's some steam here, huh.

would i dare to take this glove away? yeah. yeah, easy, easy saying that. no proem. hot or cold? begin with a c. it's cool. relatively cool. hc? i'm not gonna put it way down at the zzle. it turns out that that which you are seeing here, gang, is not steam. that which you can't see, that's the steam. but what does that steam do? begin with the x. - expand. - expand. and when it expands, what's it do? ben with ather c. - cools. - cools. and that's your evidence over right there. isn't that remarkable? so try this at home, huh? it's cool to the touch and that gets hotter, hotter, hotter, hotter, but up here it's relatively cool, cooler here than out here.

i wonder if there's a reason for that. how many say, "well, no, there's probably no reason "for that. it's just one of those little flukes of nature"? and at's what we're gonna be talking about. what was the reason when you blew like tha it was hot and you went like that it was cool? and did you notice it was appreciably cooler doing that? that's because the air had to expand. now, we can understand that if we thi small. here's a molecule moving aund. it's gon hit its neighbors, right? sometimes it's gonna hit a neighbor and bound off with more energy. sometimes it's gonna hit a neighbor and bound with less energy. now, when does it gain and when does it lose? look at this ping-pong paddle i have here. see it? watch this ping-pong ball come in and hit the paddle. watch this. watch this. [makes sound] see, it went off with the same speed? i could've held this very rigidly. watch again. [makes sound]

kinetic energy in, kinetic energy out, same, same. did you see that? this time, i'm gonna move the paddle up like this. now watch. [makes sound] did you see it move away faster? why? 'cause i hit it. i belted a hand, it came in. boom. i gave it energy. when you got a pump and you're pumping air... [makes sounds] ...do you ever reach down and reach and touch that pump? [laughter] that pump is what? - hot. - it's hot. why? 'cause you have belted those molecules. what do you have when you take a ball-- a baseball bat and start hitting balls? what are they gonna do? slow down? they're gonna speed up. and so what happens, that paddle comes in and-- now, what happens in air when air molecules movin' by and it hits-- and it sees another one that's coming toward it? ba-ba-boom. it could bounce off with more energy than it started with. this one would slow down. but that can happen. as we see with the paddle coming in--ba-boom. it goes off faster than it came in. how about the converse?

let's suppose my paddle is going away. and now my ball hits... [makes sounds] see that? shall i do it again? okay. it dribbles down. it loses speed. so if molecules will hit others that are going away, will they rebound with greater speeds or lesser speeds or is this not clear? lesser speeds. can you see it's lesser speeds? lesser speeds, gang, okay? so what happens when air expands? go right down in there, in the microscopic realm right there, and take a look, and what do you see? "hey, now, where are you guys goin'?" they're all goin' way, yeah? and you're a molecule right in there. now you're gonna bound off all those guys. and when you bound up, you pick up speed or lose speed? - lose speed. - you lose speed. that speed goes out to the air. all that energy spreads out. in there, you've got less energy. it's--you put a thermometer-- it's--you--right here. it's really cooler. it's cooler when it expands. does that have a lot to do with weather or not? a lot to do with weather conditions.

expanding air will chill, will cold, will become colder. neato? can you see why? pretty neat, huh? yeah. so you're at the top of the mountains, honey, you know why it's so cold up there. that air has been expanding. and when it's been expanding, of course, it's cold up there. it's a lot closer to the sun. no, no, that expansion rate, that expanding of that air cools it a lot. so actually when you heat something, it expands and you happen to put more energy into it because the--for expanding, too, to heat it up? oh, now, we can get a little mixed up here. it turns out that when you heat some air, like you heat anything, you will make it grow. you will make it expand. okay? so you can force something to expand. i can take a balloon of air and hold it over a stove. and it will expand. okay? we're not talking about that. it doesn't follow now that expanding things-- --not gonna change or-- well, that--now, to say that you can heat something up

and make it expand is one thing. but now we're saying if the air will expand by itself, push outward, when it expands, what happens to the temperature in the middle of that? drop. and that drops. so the reason for it expanding is because it was going from a region of higher pressure to lower pressure? excellent, excellent, excellent. the reason it expands is because the air goes from a region of high pressure, down here, deep, deep down in the bottom of this ocean of air. and when it rises, what's it gonna do? like the balloon, like the fish, like the scuba diver we've all talked about-- these ideas are all connected, gang, huh? and as it goes up, up, up, it's gonna expand. and we learned a new thing today. as it expands, son of a gun, it cools. why does it cool? because the molecules in the middle are making impact with things on the average that are going away. and so they rebound with less, less, less speeds. and the effect is big. i mean, it's quite noticeable. there's a third form of heat transfer, gang.

and the third form-- not conduction, not convection but what? radiation. radiation. that's right. radiation. and heat radiates from the sun. and it gets to us by the process of radiation. we're gonna talk about that a lot later on. we've talked about electromagnetic theory, and we talked about light. but i wanna talk about one aspect of that now. and that one aspect is is that the frequency of that radiation is directly proportional to the temperature of the source. why i want you to know about that is because i want you to know a little bit about what people are talking about when they talk about the greenhouse effect. you've all heard about it: the fact that there's a layer of carbon dioxide in the world now that is holding in the heat, and the earth is becoming warmer and warmer as the years go by, at least that's the idea. i want you to understand that. and to understand that, we have to consider a formula.

now the formula makes sense, kinda. it just says that the frequency of radiation is directly proportional to the temperature of the source. let me give you an idea. you see this rubber tube i have, stretched out and connected to the wall over there? can you all, guys, see the rubber tube? what color is the rubber tube? - yellow. - green. can you guys all be lookin' at the same rubber tube? what color is the rubber tube? - blue. - green. well, take your pick, all right? put on your glasses. so we got a rubber-- it looks red to me. yeah, it's a red rubber tube. you guys see the red rubber tube? now i'm gonna shake the tube. [makes sounds] what do you guys be seein' across the room? waves. ain't that right? can you see the waves? now i want you to look at what happens to the frequency of the waves when i shake it faster. how many see the waves shakin' up? [makes sounds] how about when i shake it like this? what's the frequency of the waves? [makes sounds]

it turns out that the faster i shake, the higher the frequency of the waves. is that far out or not? that's not far out at all. that's common sense. you shake a thing like this... [makes sounds] ...you get long, lazy waves. if i shake it like this... [makes sounds] ...i'll get little, short waves like that. we'll learn about that later, okay? that wavelength, frequency. it turns out-- well, i won't even talk about wave under this point. let me just talk about frequency. that sun: high temperature or low temperature? high. the earth: relatively, high or low? low. now it turns out that everything is emitting waves: you and me and everything else that has a temperature above absolute zero. everything is emitting waves, and everything is absorbing waves. we're just gonna concentrate on the sun and the earth for now 'cause we're running out of time. the frequency of waves emitted by the sun are very, very high. the sun's temperature is like this. so the frequency of waves is like that.

so high, millions of billions of cycles per second. [makes sounds] and we call that light. and that's--and light carries energy. electromagnetic energy. high, high frequency. why is it high frequency so high it's called light? because the temperature of the sun is very, very high. okay? now that light comes down and... [makes sounds] ...hits the earth. and so the earth warms up. but the earth reradiates that energy back out. but what frequency: high or low? low. why low? because the temperature of the earth is like this. and so the frequency of radiation that's emitted is like that. that's way down below the threshold of the red in the color spectrum. we call it below red. in a physics class, you'd never say below red. in a physics class, you'd say what, gang? infrared. so it turns out the sun emits visible light, high frequency,

and the earth emits infrared, low frequency. now it turns out different things, different materials are transparent to different wavebands or frequency bands. it turns out the atmosphere of the earth is transparent, very, very nicely to visible light. of course, it is. you can look up and see the sun and the stars right through it. we have a transparent atmosphere for light, high frequencies. it turns out the atmosphere, especially if it has little water vapor in it, is terrible--is a terrible-- well, not terrible but it's a much less transparent material and medium. so what happens to us, gang, is this. this is the sun up here. and the sun is emitting very, very high frequency rays. they come right through the atmosphere. and the earth radiates low frequency, and they can't get through the atmosphere. a lot of them can, of course, but a lot can't. and those that can't then, this energy starts to pile up in here.

this happens in your car. you leave your car out in the parking lot, gang, okay? why is it when your car out in the sunlight is so hot when you open the door? well, you can say, "well, 'cause there's heat. it's been heating in the sun." but let's look a little carefully. that sunlight is comin' right through that window, high frequency, right through the window pane. and what it does, it hits the inside of your car and heats it up. and the inside of your car reradiates. now if the inside reflect it, you'd be okay. that's why you put that silver stuff on your windshield. that's gonna reflect the light. and that reflected light-- it turns out reflected light doesn't change its frequency. we'll learn later on if you're wearing a blue shirt and you stand in front of a mirror, guess what color your image is, gang? son of a gun, blue. now you put on a red shirt and you stand in front of a mirror, what is it? whoa. same shade of red, okay? it turns out that reflection doesn't change frequency, but reradiation does. 'cause you catch it, reradiate it from one source

and reradiate it from the other source, honey, you get different frequencies. and that's what's happening with the greenhouse effect. it reradiates a frequency that can't get through, especially that carbon dioxide. and that's holdin' the energy in. you kinda be seein' that? important stuff. okay, more physics next time. yay. [music] captioning performed by aegis rapidtext