Friday, April 17, 2015
Two materials
Suppose you start with a chunk of metal, say gold, at 0 Kelvin. Then you add 1000 J of energy to the gold in isolation. Suppose then that you bring that gold into intimate contact with another material, aluminum or silicon for example, of similar size, which has had only 200 J of energy added to it (after starting at T=0 K). How would you describe, qualitatively, what might happen when the two materials are brought into contact with each other. Please comment here. Feel free to ask questions, speculate or whatever.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
(Correct me if my speculation is wrong)
ReplyDeleteI think that the two materials (A and B) will try to reach thermal equilibrium as what Freddy pointed out. The process, however, I think before coming into contact, the electrons in metal A with the higher energy input will jump to a higher available states leaving "holes" in their place. The electrons in material B will be able to migrate into these holes in material A after contact while leaving holes of their own. As a consequence, the electrons in the higher energy state in metal A will be able to fall to a lower states in material B. The process continues to reach equilibrium of the system.