Conduction is a general term used whenever you are talking about moving something from one place to another. One familiar example is a conductor on a train. A train conductor helps move people from place to place.

In this video we're looking at another type of conduction - heat energy conduction. Barkley is experimenting with the conduction of heat energy from a hotter to a cooler item. Heat energy always travels from a hotter to a cooler material. In a solid material, like Barkley's experimental oven mitts, heat energy moves from the mitts to Barkley's hands since those items are touching each other.

Not all solids are good conductors of heat. Barkley's mitts were made of metal. As you could see from the video, metal is a very good conductor of heat. When Ted used Barkley's mitts, heat energy was transferred to the surface of the mitts by touching the metal rack in the oven. The metal gloves passed the heat energy to Ted's hands -- not a good idea.

The movement of heat energy can be understood by thinking about the game "hot potato." Imagine a group of students lined up in a single file. The teacher (representing the original source of the heat energy) hands the first student a bag of "hot potatoes." The hot potatoes represent heat energy. The first student takes one potato (heat energy) and then quickly passes the others to the next student (heat energy is conducted). Each student takes one potato and then passes the bag until the bag is empty. The bag of hot potatoes travels from one student to another, just as the heat energy travels from one item to another. Some of the heat energy is transferred to each student. Similarly, when heat energy travels through a material, depending upon how quickly and efficiently that heat energy is conducted, some of the heat is lost to the material.

To protect his hand from the heat, Barkley should have chosen a material that is a poor heat conductor. These materials are called insulators. Most oven mitts are made using polyester fibers. These materials resist the conduction of heat energy.

Sometimes heat and temperature are used interchangeably. That's not really accurate. Heat is energy. Temperature is a measure of how concentrated heat energy is in an item.

NASA and the engineering community use conductors and insulators of heat energy in many products they design and build. The shuttle must be insulated from the extreme heat created when it reenters our atmosphere. Engineers design your cookware to have good conduction properties on the cooking part of the pan and good insulating properties on the handles you hold. Barkley could benefit from the engineering knowledge in designing cookware.