Physics Lesson.

There’s a moral to this story, and only a few will get it, so if you get bored somewhere near the middle, just speed-read until you get to the moral. I love stories with a “Moral”, it reminds me of the good old days when everybody spoke in parables.

Just like language snobs are a pain to me, because I don’t write good English, It bothers me when amateurs start talking about things being too warm or cold, so I get my turn to be a pain, because I am qualified! (Not to be a pain, but to explain hot and cold) I consider myself kind of a cold expert, being a refrigeration contractor and all.

First, there is no such thing as cold… Don’t go off on me yet!!! I know what you are thinking, and that’s not nice. But, there is no such thing as cold.

Everything has heat in it, clear down to 460 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. So, if there is any place that is 460 degrees below zero you can say it’s cold. Until then, it has heat… got it? Actually, because this is kind of scientific, and I know that there is some pretty smart people out there, I should tell you that absolute zero Fahrenheit is actually -459.67 degrees. Having cleared that up, now I’m an honest person again, but just for the sake of simplicity, we’re going to call it -460, okay?

At absolute zero all molecules stop moving, that’s because they have no energy. If you had a wire that was at absolute zero, electricity would flow through it endlessly, without any resistance at all. Anything at absolute zero is a super-conductor. But, don’t worry, nobody has gotten anything down to absolute zero yet, so all those thoughts about free energy are all wasted. Scientist’s have gotten things pretty close to absolute zero, and electricity flowed with way less resistance, but they never got to zero. Same as an absolute vacuum, there is no such thing. Even in outer space there are a few molecules floating around fouling up the otherwise perfect vacuum. So, absolute zero, and an absolute vacuum only exist in theory. That’s why we have what they call “theoretical scientists”, to study such abstractions. Hey, it a tough job, but somebody has to do it.

To explain heat to you, the English people invented a unit of heat that they called the British Thermal Unit. Most people just call it a BTU. It is the amount of heat that is used to heat one pound of water one degree Fahrenheit. So if you had one pound of water at absolute zero, and added one BTU of heat to it would become one degree warmer, and become -459 degrees. Actually you might have guessed that at -460 water is ice, so you are right about that. Now if you add 459 more BTUs, you would have zero degree ice, and if you add 32 more BTUs. You would have 32 degree ice.

Now for the fun part, if you add 100 BTUs you will still have thirty two degree ice, in fact you will have to add 144 BTUs to melt one pound of ice into thirty two degree water. The 144 BTUs of heat that it takes to melt 1 pound of ice is called the latent heat of fusion.

So, now you have invested 1,146 BTUs of heat to make yourself a glass of ice water. Are you beginning to see that there is no such thing as cold. If you add 180 more BTUs you will have boiling water. Then you will have to add 970 BTUs to turn your boiling water to steam. By then you will have added 2,296 BTUs of heat to your water to turn it to vapor. The 970 BTUs are called the latent heat of vaporization.

If you are still with me and not bored spitless, you should also know that there is no “up or down” when it comes to expressing temperature. Temperature is expressed as hotter or less hot. There is no such thing as cold, remember. If you ask me to “turn up your freezer” I will have no idea what you mean, I won’t know if you want it hotter or less hot. So, to be polite I might ask you something like: “What is the temperature now, and what would you like it to be.” When you say: “I don’t know, just turn it down” I will ask you if it’s to warm. “Warm” is kinda’ okay to use because it doesn’t acknowledge that cold exists, and that’s a good thing. So I will turn your freezer a few degrees less warm.

I judge everyone by how well that I think that they might be at building a refrigerator, so most people look pretty bad to me. Everybody uses a refrigerator, or a freezer and everybody knows what temperature that they are the most comfortable at, but few people are experts. Most people are real nice and they deserve to be treated decently, so I don’t correct them about there being no such thing as cold when they make that mistake. As you might guess I spend a lot of time not correcting people that make that mistake, and I know that most people are nice to me and don’t tell me that I don’t use very good English, so I guess that it all works out.

I guess the moral would be that we are all good at different things, and we are all deserving of respect. And you got a very simple physics lesson for free. Cool… I mean “not warm“, right?

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