Thermal Physics Concepts: The Role of the Thermal Effusivity

E. Marín

Citation: Phys. Teach. 44, 432 (2006); doi: 10.1119/1.2353583

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Thermal Physics Concepts:
The Role of the Thermal
Effusivity
E. Marín, Universidad de La Habana, La Habana, Cuba
I
nspired by a previously published TPT article,1
this paper describes the concept of thermal effu-
sivity and the role of this parameter in under-
standing thermal physics concepts, in particular the
fact that when we touch objects of equal temperature
but of different materials we often feel that one body
is “hotter” or “colder.”
In the above mentioned article, Yeo and Zadnik
present an instrument to assess in students a wide
range of beliefs or understandings about thermody-
namic concepts. Their “Thermal Concept Evaluation”
consists basically of a questionnaire with 26 multiple-
choice items about heat energy and temperature, al-
lowing students to apply either everyday physics or
classroom physics in their responses. In question 16
(see Fig. 2 in Ref. 1) students are asked about the pre-
ferred explanation of the following situation:
Kim takes a metal ruler and a wooden ruler
from a pencil case. He announces that the metal
one feels colder than the wooden one.
The authors of the paper suggest that of the five pos-
sible responses, the best explanation of the described
effect is that metal conducts energy away from his hand
more rapidly than wood. This assertion, in our opin-
ion, can lead to the mistaken notion that the relevant
thermophysical parameter for the described phenom-
enon is the very well-known thermal conductivity k
instead of the thermal effusivity , whose role is usu-
ally undervalued and/or misunderstood, but which
can be exploited in advanced introductory physics
432
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courses, especially at the high school level, where the
analysis of energy transport problems presented in
standard textbooks does not make any use of its con-
cept. Therefore, it is the objective of this paper to dis-
cuss briefly the meaning of this parameter and its role
in transient heating phenomena. For this purpose we
will make use of the example described above.
Thermal effusivity, also called “contact coefficient”
by some authors,2 is defined as
ε = kρc = k = ρc α , (1)
α
where α is the thermal diffusivity, ρ the mass density,
and c the specific heat.3 An extended explanation of
the physical relevance of the parameters governing
the generation and propagation of heat energy in
solids can be found in many books, monographs, and
articles.4-7
Thermal conductivity is defined by Fourier’s law of
heat energy conduction8 and measures the energy flow
per unit time through a unit area of a unit thickness
of a material that has a unit temperature difference
between its opposite faces. On the other hand, a time-
varying phenomenon is described by the differential
equation of thermal diffusion9 (energy conservation
law), also requiring knowledge of the thermal diffusiv-
ity and effusivity. The former is the quantity associated
with the speed of propagation of energy in a material
as its temperature changes. If the changes are periodic,
the thermal effusivity comes into play, determining
the magnitude of the temperature at the solid surface.
In this case, the temperature field behaves as an at-
DOI: 10.1119/1.2353583 THE PHYSICS TEACHER ◆ Vol. 44, October 2006
 34 Table I. Thermal properties of different homogeneous sol-
hard wood ids at room temperature.
32
PVC Material k(W. α(x106 ε(J.m-2. ρc (x 10-6
30
m-1.K-1) m2.s-1) K-1.s-1/2) J/m3.K)
Glass
Tc (oC)

28 Diamond 2300 1290 64,040 1.78

26
Cu 400 116 37,140 3.45
K 102 158 8150 0.65
24
Pb Co 100 24.6 20,150 4.05
22 Co Cu Diamond
Ni 91 23 19,400 3.95
K Pb 35 23 7300 1.52
20 Ni
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Glass 1.11 0.56 1480 1.98
PVC 0.20 0.15 515 1.33
ε(x 104J . m-2 . K-1 . s-1/2)
Hard Wood 0.16 1.77 380 0.09
Fig. 1. Contact or feeling temperature between human Human Skin 0.37 0.109 1120 3.39
skin at 37oC and different bodies at 20oC as a function
of their thermal effusivities [from Eq. (2)].

tenuated plane wave well known as a thermal wave.6,7
The concept of thermal wave first appeared about a
hundred years ago when Fourier10 showed that heat
conduction problems could be solved by expanding
temperature distributions as series of waves and has
become a great interest for the explanation of the pho-
tothermal phenomena, on which several modern mea-
surement techniques are based. In these methods
thermal waves are generated in a given sample by
means of a periodically varying heat source, and the
changes in the sample’s temperature (or in tempera-
ture-dependent parameters) are monitored. In the
same issue of TPT referred to above, McIntosh and
Sharratt11 describe a possible student experiment
related to the conduction of heat energy in soils ex-
cited by a natural periodically time-dependent source,
namely the daily periodic oscillations in Earth tem-
perature. These oscillations can be treated as thermal
waves and this kind of experiment as a typical pho-
tothermal one. As are other kinds of waves, thermal
waves are subject to effects such as reflection and
refraction. The thermal effusivity determines the val-
ues of the reflection and transmission coefficients for
thermal waves propagating at the interface between
two media (it is a measure of the thermal mismatch
between them), playing a very important role in the
recently developed field of thermal wave interferom-
etry.7 In what follows we will show how the thermal
effusivity describes a material’s ability to exchange
heat energy with the environment.
To demonstrate that the thermal effusivity concept
is of great importance when the contact of human
skin with a material at a different temperature is stud-
ied, we can start by considering that when one brings
two half-infinite materials with temperatures T1 and
T2 (T1 > T2) into ideal thermal contact for a brief
time interval, the mutual contact interface acquires a
contact temperature Tc. This means that the surface
temperature of each material becomes Tc. As given by
several authors2-4 this temperature can be estimated as
ε1T1 + ε2T2
Tc = . (2)
ε1 + ε2
This result can be obtained by solving the heat
energy diffusion equation with proper boundary
conditions.2,3 According to Eq. (2), if 1 = 2, Tc
lies halfway between T1 and T2, while if 1 > 2, Tc
will be closer to T1, and if 1 < 2, Tc will be closer
to T2 (it is worth noting that the actual value of the
contact temperature can be affected by changes in
surface characteristics such as roughness7).
The above result is the reason why when we touch
bodies of equal temperature but of different effusivi-
ties, they do not seem to be equally hot or cold. The
contact (feeling) temperature is a function of the
effusivity of the body we touch. Figure 1 shows the
calculated contact temperature [Eq. (2)] between hu-
man skin at 37oC and different materials at 20oC as
a function of their thermal effusivities (see Table I for
values). When touching the metal (e.g. Cu) ruler of

THE PHYSICS TEACHER ◆ Vol. 44, October 2006 433

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the Yeo and Zadnik example, because metal >> skin,
the temperature of the skin drops suddenly to 20oC,
and one senses the object as being “cold.” On the
other hand, when touching a wooden ruler (wood
< skin) the skin temperature remains closer to 37oC,
and one senses the object as being “warm.” This is
also the reason why floors made of different materials
that are at the same room temperature feel warmer or
colder to our bare feet.
It is usually said, as in the Yeo and Zadnik article,
that a certain material in contact with the skin feels
warmer or colder depending on the value of its ther-
mal conductivity. The source of this misconception is
the coincidence that in solids a high effusivity material
is also a good heat conductor, as one can see in Table
I. If 2 is plotted as a function of k, one can see that all
points lie close to a straight line because the heat ca-
pacity per unit volume, i.e., the product ρc, is almost
constant in condensed matter at room temperature.4
[Notice that Eq. (1) can be written as 2 = ρck].
In conclusion, with this paper we try to clarify the
role played by thermal effusivity in understanding
thermal physics concepts. We remind the reader that
how “warm” or “cool” a room temperature object feels
to the touch depends on more than just the thermal
conductivity of the material. According to the defini-
tion of thermal conductivity, under steady-state con-
ditions a good thermal conductor in contact with a
thermal reservoir at a higher temperature (the skin in
our example) extracts from it more energy per second
than a poor conductor, but under transient conditions
(e.g., a body suddenly coming in contact with a res-
ervoir at higher temperature) the body with a higher
effusivity extracts more energy than the one with a
lower value of this parameter. Therefore, the density
and specific heat of the object also come into play
through the thermal effusivity concept [Eq. (1)] and
so must be considered. Thermal effusivity is a little-
known quantity in physics, although it is the relevant
thermophysical parameter for surface heating or cool-
ing processes. However, without realizing it we are in
reality very familiar with it, as the example presented
here shows.
434
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References
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PACS codes: 44.10.+I, 44.50.+f
Ernesto Marín Moares is currently the head of the
General Physics Department and a professor of modern
physics at the faculty of physics of Havana University. He
is graduated from the Technical University of Dresden,
Germany, and obtained a doctorate from the Havana
University. His main research interests include photother-
mal phenomena and techniques, as well as physics edu-
cation. He is now at Centro de Investigación en Ciencia
Aplicada y Tecnología Avanzada (CICATA) of the Instituto
Politécnico Nacional (IPN), México, D.F.
CICATA-IPN, Legaria No. 694, Col. Irrigación
C.P. 11500, Deleg. Miguel Hidalgo, Mexico, D.F.;
emarin63@yahoo.es
THE PHYSICS TEACHER ◆ Vol. 44, October 2006