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Heat! (Physics related)

LaserWolfLaserWolf Portland Oregon 11,517 Posts
edited May 2009 in Strut Central
There are 3 kinds of heat, conduction, convection and radiation. In recent years radiant floors have become very popular. Now radiant ceilings are becoming popular. When I heard of this I thought it was a bad idea. Hot air rises, thus I assumed, a heated ceiling would be inefficient. Very smart people assure me that it is not inefficient because it would be radiation heat, not convection. I'm not convinced. or ?

  Comments

  • dollar_bindollar_bin I heartily endorse this product and/or event 2,326 Posts
    I'm only a biophysicist so I'm a little rusty on some of the concepts, but here's my interpretation.

    The key is that the heat energy transfer doesn't occur just at the interface between the ceiling and the room air. The warm surface is emitting infrared electromagnetic radiation that propagates downward into the room heating solid objects and to a lesser extent air below. Even though any small portion of the ceiling emits a very low amount of radiation so it's hard to perceive it by our senses, the offset is that the ceiling has a very large surface area which provides a large amount of heat radiation into the room.
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