Newton's law of cooling
Use this interactive figure to explore Newton's law of cooling for different initial temperatures, room temperatures, and rates of cooling.
Newton's law of cooling says that if is the temperature of the object at time and is the constant surrounding temperature, then the rate of change of the temperature of the object is
We might call the proportional rate of cooling; it is the rate of cooling per degree difference between the object and its surrounding. Solving the differential equation yields where is the temperature of the object at . In this interactive figure you can control the intial temperature of the object , the surrounding temperature , and the proportional rate of cooling to see their effect on the temperature of an object over time.Developed for use with Thomas' Calculus, published by Pearson.