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Everything's perfect, you've been enjoying your bath for more than
20 minutes now. Nice haze around the room, bath smells good, you
made yourself a nice moustache with the foam, nothing could make
you happier. But, here it comes, you feared it from the beginning.
It's happening, as usual. It never fails. And I'm like you: I hate
it when the bath gets cold!

This is all about heat moving all around you. Water is hot, the
air and the tub aren't. As nature always tends to balance, this
whole system will eventually have the same temperature. Water is
the heat source. The tub and the air are the heat sinks. But those
two sinks "eat" heat in different ways. The tub is in contact with
water. The same way you heat up your feet after a winter walk with
your hands, water is heating up the tub. This is called conduction,
heat transfer by contact.

The air just over the water surface is being heated. As you know,
hot air is lighter than cold air. Thanks to Archimedes, we know
that this hot air will go up. And the nearby cold air replaces it.
This new air is being heated in turn... and so on. This is called
convection, heat transfer by displacement of fluid. When all the
air will share the same temperature, this movement will stop.
• air conditionning
• the Gulf Stream
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• ice in a drink
• hot potato burning your tongue
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