In a recent post I calculated how cold air coming out of bike tires should feel. However, at the end of the post, I did note that there are competing explanations for why the air cools. There's the approach I took, which is adiabatic cooling, but there's also something called the Joule-Thomson effect. The Joule-Thomson effect has the interesting property that helium being let out of a bike tire would actually be warmer, which suggests an immediate way to test which effect is dominant. We pressurize a bike tire with helium, and see if the valve gets cold or hot. This is exactly what I did.
Showing posts with label busted. Show all posts
Showing posts with label busted. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
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