A question for some physics homework. A duvet insulates heat from your body, is the heat transfer convection or conduction?
Is “neither” one of the options? After all, if the duvet was perfectly insulating, there would be no heat transfer. Unfortunately its misleading to think of convection and conduction and radiation as separate forms of heat transfer. Usually all three are involved to some extent. Convection is the transfer of heat by movement of a fluid. Conduction is the transfer of heat from atom to adjacent atom. Radiation is the transfer of heat by photons. All occur in a fluid, although in a gas the convection is usually the important one. In a duvet, there are several processes going on: trapped air cannot move around much, so heat must conduct into the trapped air, then conduct the heat to the ouside air. Nevertheless, some air gets through, so there is some convection going on there as well. There’s also convection under the duvet and above it. The duvet heats up and radiates into the trapped air. The trapped air heats up and radiates into the duvet. The surface of the duvet radiates into the be
