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Under this condition, the diffusivity is much lower compared to molecular diffusion and small differences in the kinetic diameter of the molecule cause large differences in diffusivity. Biologists often use the terms "net movement" or "net diffusion" to describe the movement of ions or molecules by diffusion.
Molecular diffusion, often simply called diffusion, is the thermal motion of all (liquid or gas) particles at temperatures above absolute zero. The rate of this movement is a function of temperature, viscosity of the fluid and the size (mass) of the particles.
The former mechanism describes diffusion as the motion of the diffusing atoms between interstitial sites in the lattice of the solid it is diffusion into, the latter describes diffusion through a mechanism more analogue to that in liquids or gases: Any crystal at nonzero temperature will have a certain number of vacancy defects (i.e. empty ...
Fick's first law relates the diffusive flux to the gradient of the concentration. It postulates that the flux goes from regions of high concentration to regions of low concentration, with a magnitude that is proportional to the concentration gradient (spatial derivative), or in simplistic terms the concept that a solute will move from a region of high concentration to a region of low ...
Forced diffusion occurs because of the action of some external force; Diffusion can be caused by temperature gradients (thermal diffusion) Diffusion can be caused by differences in chemical potential; This can be compared to Fick's law of diffusion, for a species A in a binary mixture consisting of A and B:
Thermal conduction is the diffusion of thermal energy (heat) within one material or between materials in contact. The higher temperature object has molecules with more kinetic energy; collisions between molecules distributes this kinetic energy until an object has the same kinetic energy throughout.
The convection–diffusion equation can be derived in a straightforward way [4] from the continuity equation, which states that the rate of change for a scalar quantity in a differential control volume is given by flow and diffusion into and out of that part of the system along with any generation or consumption inside the control volume: + =, where j is the total flux and R is a net ...
As seen in the heat equation, [5] =, one way to view thermal diffusivity is as the ratio of the time derivative of temperature to its curvature, quantifying the rate at which temperature concavity is "smoothed out".