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An object loses thermal energy any time it is in an environment where there "ambient" temperature is lower than that of the object. It is the difference in temperatures between the object and its surrounds that will determine the speed of the heat loss (along with other factors like insulation and the composition of the object and the surrounds, etc.). If we consider the case of a red hot piece of iron, it will begin to cool immediately in air when removed from a furnace. It will cool a bit faster when put into a working freezer, and much faster when put into water of the same temperature as the air around it. All of this makes sense if we think about it. In general, everything is continually gaining and losing energy. If all the objects in a room are "soaking" at the ambient temperature, they are all gaining and giving off thermal energy, and they are all doing this at equilibrium. That's how they hold their temperature. Think about this. It is the key to understanding a basic principle of thermodynamics. Here's why. A bunch of objects in a closed environment that have been there a good while are constantly giving off and capturing thermal energy, but are doing so in a way that they do not change temperatute. Start to monkey with the temperature in the environment and things go haywire. With an understanding of the constant nature of the "circulating thermal energy" in a closed system, you can initiate an investigation of how thermodynamics works, and you can figure out why something like, say, a thermal imaging camera, will work so well.

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