Cool in the Kitchen: Radiation, Conduction, and the Newton “Hot Block” Experiment

Cool in the Kitchen: Radiation, Conduction, and the Newton “Hot Block” Experiment Our curiosity was aroused. How good an approximation to reality is Newton’s law— and what in any event determines whether the temperature of the hot object is too high? Furthermore, although Newton’s name is readily associated with his laws of motion, law of gravity, and various optical phenomena and apparatus, it does not usually appear in discussions of thermal phenomena. Indeed, apart from this one instance, a search through a score or more of history of science books and thermal physics books at various levels of instruction produced but one other circumstance for noting Newton’s name—and that was his failure to recognize the adiabatic nature of sound propagation in air.3 This historical footnote accentuates, however, the circumstance that Newton pursued his interests at a time long before the concept of heat was understood. He died in 1727, but the beginning of a coherent system of thermal physics might arbitrarily be set at nearly a hundred years later when Sadi Carnot published (1824) his fundamental studies on “the motive power of fire” (La puissance motrice du feu). What, then, prompted Newton to study the rate at which hot objects cool, how did he go about it, and where did he record his work?