Do all materials and metals conduct equally well?

Answer 1

All metals are good conductors of heat and electricity.

Aluminum, copper, silver, gold, and other exhibit this general characteristic.

Metals, like other solids have atoms confined to regular positions. The vibration of these atoms imbues them with kinetic energy and when atoms in one region vibrate faster than in another, the faster region has a higher temperature. If a material has a region of high temperature and a region of low temperature, then the vibrations of atoms with a region with more kinetic energy will interact with neighboring atoms and they will acquire more of the energy. This process continues and eventually the colder regions get some of the energy from the warmer regions. After a long time, an insulated object will distribute energy by this process of interactions with neighboring atoms and the temperature in the object will become uniform.

The process of conducting heat described above works in all materials, liquid, gas or solid with atoms of higher kinetic energy transferring energy to neighboring atoms of less kinetic energy.

The process of heat moving from hot to cold is called thermal conduction. Some materials are better at it than others and that depends on the makeup of the material.

But, metal have something special going for them so they get a little extra boost in the thermal conductivity arena. Metals have a lot of electrons that are not strongly bound to the atoms. (The have have strongly bound electrons too, but a typical metal has one or two per atom that or not strongly bound.) In fact, these weakly bound electrons are not even associated with one atom in particular, but are nearly free to have their range extend throughout the conducting material.

A very significant amount of heat energy flow is attributable to the nearly-free electrons in a metal. The mechanism is a little complicated because the elecrons are moving very fast, even when no electricity is flowing. Not only are the electrons able to gain energy in the hot regions and move to the cold regions easily, the movement of the atoms affect not one electron but the entire cloud of nearby electrons and so can effectively extend the range of influence of one vibrating atom to atoms further away.

Answer 2

Definitely not. Materials and metals all have different thermal conductivity values. A select list is found at [related link]. The higher the thermal conductivity, the more heat it transfers easily.

Answer 3

uneven heating can result in convection, both in the air and in water

Answer 4

uneven heating can result in convection, both in the air and in water

Answer 5

all materials conduct heat energy equally