AN UNDERGRADUATE EXPERIMENT ON THE PROPAGATION OF THERMAL WAVES

When a long thin bar of a material is subject to periodic heating, a t emperature wave propagates along the sample, and its propagation prope rties can be used to determine the thermal diffusivity of the material . In this paper, we present a simple experiment that can be used by un dergraduate students to better understand thermal waves and their prop agation and to measure thermal diffusivity. In spite of its simplicity , the experiment provides acceptable results for a copper sample. (C) 1998 American Association of Physics Teachers.