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Calculus/newton's law of cooling

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Expert: Alon Mandes - 8/25/2008


Question
in newton's law of cooling [ dT/dt = -k (T-Ts) ]: what does 1/k represent? [k being the constant in newton's law of cooling.]
does it represent the temperature constant or the time constant?
Thanks!

Answer
k is a positive constant of proportionality that depends on the material properties of the object.I's also called the decay constant. This constant governs the rate of cooling per minute.
This positive constant characteristic of the system, must be in units of 1/time, and is therefore sometimes expressed in terms of a time constant: k = 1/t0. Hence, 1/k is expressed in term of time
units.

Alon.  

Calculus

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Alon Mandes

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Kind of questions I can answer : Limits, Derivatives, Integration, Implicit functions, continuousity, differentiation ,Extremum problems, Lagrange multipliers, Gradients, Surface integrals, Multi variables functions ,Multi variables Integrals,Complex variables ,Complex functions, Curves, Trajectory integrals & Vector analyse,Divergence,Rotor & word problems. Kind of question I can't answer : Economics,Combinatorics,infinite series & convergence ,Statistics & Probabilities .

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