←
Lesson 24 · Heat Flowing Through a Wall
Watts through walls
score 0

Watts through walls

So far every answer has been a lump sum of joules. But heat through a window never finishes — it runs as a steady rate, joules every second, and a joule per second has a name you know from light bulbs: the watt. The formula is P=kA ΔTdP = \dfrac{kA\,\Delta T}{d} (read aloud: P equals k A delta-T over d). kk is the material's conductivity (glass conducts eagerly, foam barely), AA is how much wall is leaking, ΔT\Delta T is how hard the heat is being pushed — and the thickness dd sits underneath, because a thicker wall resists.

That dd underneath is the entire physics of insulation: double the thickness, halve the leak. Two field notes for the questions below. First, keep rate and amount apart — watts are joules per second, and this lesson asks for the rate. Second, thickness arrives in millimetres and the formula runs on metres — a 4 mm pane entered as 4 makes the window a thousand times thicker than it is, in the flattering and wrong direction.

ΔTkAPd

P=kAΔTdP = \tfrac{k A \Delta T}{d}

  • PP= Heat flow rate (power)
  • kk= Thermal conductivity (thermal conductivity)
  • AA= Cross-sectional area (area)
  • ΔT\Delta T= Temperature difference (temperature difference)
  • dd= Thickness (length)
Heat Conduction Rate solver →