Nathan Winn
Faculty Sponsor: John Yukich
Thermal diffusion is variable among different materials. This difference is measured by ⍺, thermal diffusivity, which is determined in the first set of experiments for aluminum and copper plates. These parameters were calculated with b2 plots, which are derived from multiple gaussians taken at different times. The ⍺ parameters were determined for aluminum and copper as 0.71 0.07 cm2/s and 1.94 0.10 cm2/s, respectively. To further this experiment, the apparatus was reduced to a 1-D model, where diffusion only happens linearly instead of radially outward. To accomplish this, long rods were used to simulate linear diffusion. With this simplification, we will be able to see how linear diffusion differs from radial diffusion.
