ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
*****************************************************************************

One word, my friend: entropy. A car on a hot day isn't a free energy
machine, it's not creating "new heat" out of nothing. And it certainly
isn't contributing to global warming. Now, the exhaust from the cars....

Jonah Cohen
Outreach & Public Programs Manager 
The Children's Museum (formerly The Science Center of Connecticut)

"Did you ever stop to wonder why we know it's true, if you drop and
break an egg you will not get an egg that's new."
	-MC Hawking, "Entropy"

-----Original Message-----
From: Informal Science Education Network
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of [log in to unmask]
Sent: Wednesday, September 06, 2006 1:55 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: heat: a thought exercise

ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology
Centers
Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related
institutions.
************************************************************************
*****

I was chatting with a host at a wine-tasting event this past weekend in
Sonoma, and as soon as he found out I was involved in the science museum
field, he posed a challenge, and it threw me to the extent that I said
I'd
post it to the ASTC list and see where the chips fell.

*****
Here's the exercise:

Imagine that you've parked your car outside on a hot summer day.  When
you
open the doors after a couple of hours, you're blasted with the heat
that
has built up inside.  Is this "new heat"?  If so, could this (gazillions
of cars sitting around) theoretically contribute to an excess of global
heat (global warming)?  To add to the exercise, imagine that this is
taking place 10 million years ago, without the variables brought on by
chemicals in the atmosphere.
*****

If you're like me, you'll have a knee-jerk reaction to this exercise,
but
then you may step back a mental notch and find yourself asking more
questions than you thought you started out with, so I will stop here and
not pollute the discussion with any of my own initial thoughts.

My new friend is looking for equations and the like to prove the point -
one way or the other - game on!!!

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More information about the Informal Science Education Network and the
Association of Science-Technology Centers may be found at http://www.astc.org.
To remove your e-mail address from the ISEN-ASTC-L list, send the
message  SIGNOFF ISEN-ASTC-L in the BODY of a message to
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