Newton's Law of Cooling

Calculus Level 3

I just took my boiling water (100 ^\circ C) off of the stove because it was boiling over. In the 3 minutes I had it off the burner, the temperature decreased to 85 ^\circ C. Given that the room temperature is 25 ^\circ C and Newton's law of cooling is followed, find the temperature of the water in degrees Celsius when I leave it on the counter for 3 more minutes.


The answer is 73.

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2 solutions

Ed Sirett
Aug 29, 2016

If you notice that the water lost 15C of its initial 75C (above the room temp) in 3 mins then it lost 20% in those 3 mins and will therefore loose 20% of its excess temperature in the next 3 mins i.e. 12C bringing it down to 73C . Alas, in reality the cooling rate of hot water at temperatures near boiling is greatly increased by evaporation, convection and and even a some radiation all of which don't obey a simple linear conduction heat loss model.

Samir Khan
Jun 15, 2016

Setting up and solving the separable equation gives ln ( T T 0 ) = k t + c . -\ln(T-T_0)=kt+c. Here, ignoring units, we have T 0 = 25. T_0 = 25. At time t = 0 , t=0, we have T = 100 , T=100, which gives

ln ( 100 25 ) = k 0 + c , -\ln(100-25) = k\cdot 0 + c,

so c = ln ( 75 ) . c=-\ln(75). Then, at time t = 3 , t=3, we have T = 85 , T=85, so

ln ( 85 25 ) = k 3 ln ( 75 ) , -\ln(85-25) = k\cdot 3 -\ln(75),

so k = ln ( 75 ) ln ( 60 ) 3 = ln ( 5 4 ) 3 . k = \dfrac{\ln(75)-\ln(60)}{3} = \dfrac{\ln\left(\frac{5}{4}\right)}{3}. Finally, we can substitute t = 6 t=6 to find

ln ( T 25 ) = ln ( 5 4 ) 3 6 ln ( 75 ) = ln ( 75 4 2 5 2 ) = ln ( 48 ) . -\ln(T-25) = \frac{\ln\left(\frac{5}{4}\right)}{3} \cdot 6 - \ln(75) = -\ln\left(75 \cdot \frac{4^2}{5^2}\right) = -\ln(48).

Thus, T 25 = 48 , T-25 = 48, so the temperature after 3 3 more minutes is 7 3 C . 73^\circ\text{C}.\ _\square

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