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AnswerNewton's law of cooling describes the rate an object will cool at when placed in surroundings of lower temperature. The law is derived by some basics of calculus, but based on one fact: the rate of cooling of an object is proportional to the difference in temperature between the surroundings and the object. It does assume some things and simplifies others (such as where the energy goes after leaving our object and the energy flow through the object between areas with different temperature - inside and outside) but is generally a very good approximation.

Various forms of the original equation can be used depending on purpose, but solving is a lot simpler. dTt/dt = -ΔTt/t0, where Tt is the temperature of the object at a given time, t is time, and t0 is a time constant. This is a differential equation, and can be integrated to give us a solution: ΔTt = ΔT0 * e-rt, where r = 1/t0 is the time constant and e is the natural log base.

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15y ago

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