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Newton's law is most closely obeyed in purely conduction-type cooling. However, the heat transfer coefficient is a function of the temperature difference in natural convective (buoyancy driven) heat transfer. In that case, Newton's law only approximates the result when the temperature difference is relatively small.
The law of heat conduction, also known as Fourier's law (compare Fourier's heat equation), states that the rate of heat transfer through a material is proportional to the negative gradient in the temperature and to the area, at right angles to that gradient, through which the heat flows.
The flow of heat is a form of energy transfer. Heat transfer is the natural process of moving energy to or from a system, other than by work or the transfer of matter. In a diathermal system, the internal energy can only be changed by the transfer of energy as heat: =.
Heat transfer is a discipline of thermal engineering that concerns the generation, use, conversion, and exchange of thermal energy between physical systems. Heat transfer is classified into various mechanisms, such as thermal conduction, thermal convection, thermal radiation, and transfer of energy by phase changes.
A 2008 review paper written by Philips researcher Clemens J. M. Lasance notes that: "Although there is an analogy between heat flow by conduction (Fourier's law) and the flow of an electric current (Ohm’s law), the corresponding physical properties of thermal conductivity and electrical conductivity conspire to make the behavior of heat flow ...
The equation to describe this change in (relatively uniform) temperature inside the object, is a simple exponential one described by Newton's law of cooling. In contrast, the metal sphere may be large, so that the characteristic length is large and the Biot number is greater than one.
The heat transfer coefficient has SI units in watts per square meter per kelvin (W/(m 2 K)). The overall heat transfer rate for combined modes is usually expressed in terms of an overall conductance or heat transfer coefficient, U. In that case, the heat transfer rate is: ˙ = where (in SI units):
The heat transfer rate can be written using Newton's law of cooling as = (), where h is the heat transfer coefficient and A is the heat transfer surface area. Because heat transfer at the surface is by conduction, the same quantity can be expressed in terms of the thermal conductivity k: