On Fri, 26 Aug 2005 15:09:05 -0500, "s.morra"
wrote:

Ladies and Gentlemen, I want to ask you if you have experienced or know of
any stories about a particular phenomenon when quenching a red hot steel rod
in water. I have included repeated posting history below for reference.
One post is from Mr. Kolesnik in mid-2005, followed by my response to that
string when I discovered it. Then my two original posts follow that. If
you know about this phenomenon, please respond to the group here.

repeat Henry Kolesnik post on
I don't know if this is the right place to ask this question, but if it's
not please point me to the correct group.

Back in the fifties I recall heating the end of a 20 inch long piece of 1
inch cold rolled steel bar stock in a blacksmith forge to red hot. On
several occasions, instead of hammering the piece on an anvil I would plunge
it into the water because someone asked me to do something else. On these
occasions I noticed that the end that I was holding would seem to get much
hotter faster when plunged versus when hammering on the piece. For some
reason the heat traveled to the part I was holding faster when plunged
versus being forged. Is there a scientific reason for what happened or has
my memory deceived me?
tnx
repeat Henry Kolesnik post off

my response to Henry's post on
What an interesting and timely account given by Mr. Kolesnik, as I have
experienced the same phenomenon. I recently posted in several physics
newsgroups looking for an explanation after ~20 years of wondering about it.
Responses have been sparse and mostly theoretical guesswork or conjectures
(which I appreciate and consider), but without any experience of the
phenomenon or knowledge of cases (my actual question). One respondent in
sci.physics.research (p.kinsler) suggested that I try asking in an
engineering newsgroup (he also mentioned hearing about "thermal
inertia" being used to describe this phenomenon). I started doing that
today and came across Mr. Kolesnik's account. So I will repeat my post
below after a few comments.

In response to a sci.physics respondent (tadchem, Tom Davidson), I would
like to point out in the account I give below that the temperature
measurement was differential with both hands starting at room temperature.
He is generally right in saying "The human nervous system is a notoriously
unreliable and impossible to calibrate sensor", especially with single-ended
measurements (one hand). But the statement also implies an exaggeration to
the exclusion of trusting what we sense as humans and trusting only modern
test data. I see that Mr. Kolesnik experienced some of the same in his
respondents, but in his case he repeatedly experienced the same phenomenon
(I experienced it once), and neither of us fell of the potato truck
yesterday. True, in modern life it is possible to measure the phenomenon
with electronic instrumentation, and wouldn't that be nice to do. But such
a thing requires some effort and costs, which also in modern times is
generally not done without some chance of a payback on the investment. Such
an experiment might be done when someone with authority over efforts and
costs decides that maybe Mr. Kolesnik and I actually experienced something
interesting, interesting enough to imagine a payback of some kind for their
operation. Until then, the rest of us are stuck with our nervous systems to
observe with our hand (differential is better) the heat spike produced when
a steel rod with a red hot end is quenched. Like Mr. Kolesnik, it isn't the
steam produced.
my response to Henry's post off

repeat my original post on
As an example, from page 34 of
http://web.mit.edu/2.151/www/Handouts/EnPwrFlow.pdf (other references easy

This author needed a thermal inductance to fix a problem with a
formula that was an approximation to begin with. He nowhere proves
the existance of a relationship where temperature is proportiional to
the time derivative of heat flow. He merely describes how such a
thing would behave if there were such a thing, and then how it would
make his math work the way he wants it to.

Others have said they also believe in this phenomonon, but well golly
they were really too busy to actually validate it with
instrumentation.

What *is* proven here, is that faith conquers all -- even
thermodynamics!