why does sand cool and warm faster than water?

Question

other than specific heat.

Answer 1

It is because of the thermal conductivity. For water 0.6 W/m·K where sand is any where from 0.35 for dry sand to 2.7 for wet sand. Wikipedia gives a better definition, but engineering toolbox give a better list of common materials.

Answer 2

You ruled out the only answer!

Well, maybe not quite the only answer. Any heat on sand doesn't go far. It has to lose heat from the sun mainly by air convection. The heat doesn't get far into the sand because the air gaps between the grains are good insulators.

The sea can distribute the heat away from the surface by convection and the action of the waves. Also the heat can penetrate through the surface to warm deeper layers. So the heat gets spread over a huge volume of water.

So sand only heats the surface layer. The ocean has bulk heating so you need a lot more sun to warm it up.

Answer 3

Sand on the beach changes temperature faster than the ocean only on the surface since the air and/or sun only has to cool and/or heat the surface itself; the heat takes a long time to penetrate deeper by thermal conduction. Water, however, is always mixing, so to heat its surface, you'd have to heat it all the way down too. That takes more energy and, therefore, time.

Deeper down, water heats faster for the same reason (mixing). Put a pot of sand and an identical pot of water on identical burners. Put a thermometer tip in the middle of each. The water will boil (reach 212 F) before the middle of the sand gets above 100 F, I betcha.

Answer 4

One of them told that you ruled out the only answer. But I don't think so. There is another reason and that is intermolecular spaces. The less the intermolecular space, the more easier a molecule will transfer the heat to the other and obviously if it is cooled, it will cool easily. Water being a liquid & having more intermolecular space than sand warms & cools slower. On the other hand, sand being a dust for the same cools and warms faster.

Answer 5

The rate of cooling (faster or slower cooling or warming) depends on several external factors like wind, surroundings etc.But when we compare the rates for two substances, it is only the nature(property) of the substances that we can consider. This property which determines cooling or warming is sp heat only.

This is so, as heat gained or lost by a body Q = massx sp heatx change of temp. Out of this only sp heat is the property in question.

Hence sp heat is the only factor pertaining to the substances that make sand cool or warm faster than water.

Answer 6

This is one of those things that people often misunderstand.

The rate of heating and cooling has to do with thee thermal conductivity of the material, NOT with its specific heat.

Sand heats and cools faster, because it has a higher thermal conductivity than water.

Metals also have high thermal conductivities. This is why, if you touch a seat belt in a car after leaving it in the sun for hours, it will burn you. The seat belt is actually the same temperature as the seat underneath it, but since metal has a very high thermal conductance, a large amount of thermal energy is able to flow out of the seat belt and into your hand very quickly, resulting in a possible burn. Conversely, on a very cold day, metals feel a lot colder than everything else, because heat from your hand is able to flow into them very quickly, cooling your hand down faster than, say, touching the seat upholstery.

Things like styrofoam have very low thermal conductivities. That's why we use it to make coffee cups to keep the heat in our coffee for longer periods of time, (because heat conducts through styrofoam very slowly). Another example is a heavy coat. Coats are made to provide a layer of still air, (which has a very low thermal conductance), between you and the outside temperatures.

Specific heats only have to do with HOW MUCH thermal energy is required to raise the temperature of a material by a certain amount. They have nothing to do with the RATE at which heat will conduct through a material.

Answer 7

the dissimilarity of it make up is better off under controlled situation