Temperature?

Question

If you stick a metal rod in a snowbank, the end in your hand will soon become cold. Does cold flow from the snow to your hand?

Answer 1

Nope.Cold doesn't travel.Heat does.
The cold isn't coming through the bar to your hand.The heat is leaving the rod into the snow.After the rod has lost a sufficient amount of heat it starts pulling heat from your hand.
"Cold" is the abscence of heat.

Answer 2

Other than what Danny above has said, one can also think that if the temperature outside can keep the snow bank from melting, it is cold enough to cool your rod without even having to put it into the snow. The reason for this is due to cold air and moisture from the air sticking to the rod causing it to lose heat.

Answer 3

More precisely, the heat flows out from your hand through the metal rod to the snow. Cold is the absence of heat energy. Cold is not an energy in and of itself. The reason the metal gets cold so quickly is because it is such an efficient conductor of heat that it dispenses the heat into the snow rapidly.

Answer 4

Only to add what's already been said ... we are taught that heat transfer occurs from a medium of higher temperature to a medium of lower temperature.

We don't think in terms of "cold" being transferred. In the example you've given with the metal rod inserted into a snow bank, the heat transfer is described by Laplace's equation for conductive heat transfer: (dq/dt) = -kA(dT/dx).

Answer 5

No, heat is the particles having (kinetic) energy. They are vibrating all the time. Something cold absorbs heat from something hot (because of entropy). The heat flows from your hand to the snow, so as it is losing heat, your hand feels cold.

Physically cold does not really exist, cold is a lack of heat.

Answer 6

Assuming there are no other factors affecting the temperature of your hand then heat is transfered from your hand to the metal and from the metal to the snow