What is Heat?
Most recent answer: 10/22/2007
Q:
what is heat?!
- sarah (age 14)
dublin,ireland
- sarah (age 14)
dublin,ireland
A:
Sarah -
To understand what heat is, we have to think about things that are really really little. If I were to take something and break it up into about the smallest pieces I could get, I’d get what’s called an atom. Sometimes, a few atoms stick together and make what’s called a molecule. So everything around us (including us) is made up of these little atoms and molecules.
The wierd thing is that even if the big thing (like a cup of water) is sitting perfectly still, all of the atoms and molecules that make it up are moving around all the time. And the faster they move, the hotter the thing is. So when I heat up a glass of water, I’m actually making the molecules in the water move faster.
So heat is just the energy that I need to put into the glass of water to make the molecules move faster!
-Tamara
To understand what heat is, we have to think about things that are really really little. If I were to take something and break it up into about the smallest pieces I could get, I’d get what’s called an atom. Sometimes, a few atoms stick together and make what’s called a molecule. So everything around us (including us) is made up of these little atoms and molecules.
The wierd thing is that even if the big thing (like a cup of water) is sitting perfectly still, all of the atoms and molecules that make it up are moving around all the time. And the faster they move, the hotter the thing is. So when I heat up a glass of water, I’m actually making the molecules in the water move faster.
So heat is just the energy that I need to put into the glass of water to make the molecules move faster!
-Tamara
(published on 10/22/2007)