Heat transfer may be referred to the transfer of themal energy from a region of higher

temperature to that of a lower one.

It occurs in nature by three means:

1. Conduction:- In this mode, heat gets transfer between two bodies that are in
actual contact .
You can understand it by a simple example :-

Suppose you are in your class and the professor in the class have a copy in his hand and he
wanted to pass that copy to the student sitting at the last so he decided to give the copy to
the one sitting in the front and then asked him to pass the copy at the back and repeated
the same until the copy reached to the last guy. This case is similar to the conduction here
the copy can be considered as heat and it is getting transferred with actual contact as
students are passing that to their back bench while touching to each other.

2. Convection:- In this mode ,heat gets transfer between two bodies by actual flow of
matter between them or you can say by the movement of heated atoms and molecules.

Let me try to explain it with the same example as mentioned above

Consider the same case when the professor at the front wanted to give a copy to the last
student and this time too he gave copy to the one who is sitting at the front bench but now
instead of passing the copy to the back he asked the first student to give the copy to the
last student by going to his seat and providing him with the copy then.

In this case copy is again considered as heat but now rather than passing the heat through
contact the heat is transferred by actual movement of the particle as now the student
himself went to the last seat and provided the copy.

3. Radiation:- In this mode , heat gets transfer in the form of electromagnetic waves from
one body to another and this mode does not require any intervening medium as it can pass
through vacuum also. Simplest example is the sunlight we received.

Let me again try to visualize you this thing with the same example

Consider the same case where professor wanted to provide the copy to the student at the
last but this time he picked up the copy and directly thrower the copy to him at the last.
Here copy can be considered as a form of heat and we can clearly understand now that the
medium is unaffected and the heat is directly transferred in the form of waves.