Closer to the speed of quiet.
He’s so great he should have been king. King Faraday.
Nitpick; a thermos (particularly a Dewar type flask) maintains a low or high temperature equilibrium inside the container by preventing conduction of heat (transmission through a static continuum). I suppose it can be said that it heat transfer by convection as well by sealing the material inside from allowing air to blow over it, but you can get that same effect by storing it in a Tupperware-type container. It does very little to prevent radiation, and in fact, that is the main avenue for heat transfer in a Dewar flast. However, for most terrestrial temperature gradients in atmosphere, radiative heat transfer is small and conduction is by far the most effective route of heat transfer.
Regarding Maxwell, I’d argue that his contributions to modern physics and engineering exceeded that of Albert Einstein, both for their breadth and practical application. Even setting aside his eponymous work on electrodynamics, his contribution to the field of thermodynamics was substantial and notable. If Maxwell had been born a generation or two later, he doubtless would have been on the forefront of quantum mechanics.
Stranger
If you have enough panes of transparent aluminum, you can turn your entire house into a cooler! Just think of the money you’d save on heating and cooling.
Heisenberg might belong on that list. But I’m not certain.
I can tell you for how long he should be on it, though.
Or where on it. Just not both.
As Newton wrote, if he had seen further, it was on the shoulders of giants, Archimedes was the tallest of those giants. (*)
That said, I still remain gobsmaked by the contributions of people such as Archimedes, Newton and Maxwell. Gallieo too. Look at the delta they made in human knowledge. It isn’t just the discoveries they ended with, but what little they started with.
(*) There is a rather uncharitable view of this quote, but I’ll stick to the mainstream one.
Maxwell and Faraday I would think to be ranked due to their being multidisciplinary scientists which is extraordinary by their time. Both Faraday and Maxwell impacted a number of sciences in fundamental ways and that impact was an applied one.
You’re all wrong. Thermos bottles and Dewar flasks all know if they are supposed to keep drinks hot or cold by the temperature of the material put inside them and by the temperature of the surrounding air or water. When these containers are built, a small brain-like device is put in the bottom, sort of like a drain but with no holes, and, of course, spelled differently. This brain-like device takes into account the temperature of the surroundings and the temperature of the material put inside, and is able to determine by these two figures, what your intentions are. Once this is calculated, and it’s done very very quickly - in a matter of minutes - the thermos begins to do its work and it is then set to function as a cooler or as a warmer protector. The person who invented this device was the same one who invented those signs at the mall that tell you, “You are here.” Those signs happen to be equipped with devices that can actually tell where you are. Isn’t science wonderful?
Yay!
Thermoses simply prevent heat transfer whether into the thermos or out of the thermos.
You put something cold in, it’ll stay cold because heat cannot enter the thermos. If you put in something hot, it stays hot because the heat cannot get out.
There was once a story of a man who claimed that thermoses never worked for him. He’d make himself a martini for lunch at night, put it in a thermos, and put it in the fridge. When he had it for lunch, it was warm.
Of course, the joke is that the martini never got cold because the thermos kept the warmer martini from passing the heat into the fridge.
P.S. Tell your friend that the light does go out when you close the refrigerator door.