Heat transfer is a process by which thermal energy is exchanged from one substance to another substance. The study of heat transfer is known as thermodynamics which deals with the changes that result from it. Proper understanding of the concept the heat transfer is necessary to analyze thermodynamic process like those that happens in heat engines and heat pumps which benefits in lot many ways for people concerned.

According to the kinetic theory, the internal energy of a substance is produced from the motion of individual atoms or molecules. Heat energy is the form of energy that transfers this energy from one element or substance to the other. This heat transfer occurs in several ways like conduction, convection and radiation.

How heat transfer takes place

Conduction is known as heat flows through a heated solid. Convection is when heated particles transfer heat to another substance like cooking something in boiling water. Radiation is when heat transferred via electromagnetic waves like form the sun. Further radiation can transfer heat through empty space, while the other two methods require some form of matter contact for change. And in order for two substances to influence each other they must be in thermal connection with each other.

The basic principle

The basic effect of heat transfer is that the particles of one substance crash with the particles of another substance. The more energetic substance will on average lose internal energy while the less energetic substance will get internal energy.  The most barefaced effect of this in daily routine life is a phase transition where a substance changes from one state of matter to another like ice melting from solid to liquid as it absorbs heat. The water includes more internal energy than in the ice because in water the molecules are moving faster.

Thermal expansion and contraction

Further, many elements are subjected to either thermal expansion or thermal contraction as they gain and lose internal energy. Water frequently expands as it ice up which anyone who has put a drink with a cap in the freezer for too long has discovered. The heat capacity of an object assists to mean how that object's temperature behaves in response to absorbing or transmitting heat. And heat capacity is defined as the change in heat separated by the change in temperature.

Heat transfer is led by some vital principles which have become known as the laws of thermodynamics that define how heat transfer pertaining to work done by a system and place some drawbacks on what it is probable for a system to attain.

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