Thermal Expansion Quotes

Heat is a universal solvent, melting out of things their power of resistance, and sucking away and removing their natural strength with its fiery exhalations so that they grow soft, and hence weak, under its glow.

Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you'd be boiled to death before you knew it.

An Ant on a hot stove-lid runs faster than an Ant on a cold one. Who wouldn't?

But heat can also be produced by the friction of liquids, in which there could be no question of changes in structure, or of the liberation of latent heat.

(On the temperature of water in wells) The reason why the water in wells becomes colder in summer is that the earth is then rarefied by the heat, and releases into the air all the heat-particles it happens to have. So, the more the earth is drained of heat, the colder becomes the moisture that is concealed in the ground. On the other hand, when all the earth condenses and contracts and congeals with the cold, then, of course, as it contracts, it squeezes out into the wells whatever heat it holds.

When air is hot, the molecules move fast and they have high kinetic energy. The colder the molecules are, the smaller their velocities are and, subsequently, their energy. Temperature is simply a way to characterize the energy of a system.

Knowledge is hot water on wool. It shrinks time and space.

One has to arrive at a specific temperature, at which the objects become malleable.

A hot iron, though blunt, will pierce sooner than a cold one, though sharper.

For any two portions of fire, small or great, will exhibit the same ratio of solid to void; but the upward movement of the greater is quicker than that of the less, just as the downward movement of a mass of gold or lead, or of any other body endowed with weight, is quicker in proportion to its size.