I think it is all immaterial because the real reasons aluminum is used over
copper these days are: Weight and cost!
Joe
"Jeffrey J. Barteet" wrote:
>
> I've been thinking about this all day following a comment yesterday about
> copper conducting heat better than aluminum.
>
> So I don't doubt that copper conducts heat better than aluminum. But I
> thought aluminum dissapites heat better than copper. I'm thinking it does,
> but I'm not positive of the physics behind it really.
>
> And for purposes of comparison, is a material's ability to conduct heat
> ALWAYS directly porportional to conducting electricity? Is there any
> material out there that's great at conducting heat, but not electricity or
> vice versa?
>
> Can we assume that if material A conducts electricity better than material
> B, that material A also conducts heat better than material B?
>
> And finally, is the property of a material to conduct heat also make it a
> good property to dissipate heat?
>
> Every heat sink I've ever seen was made of aluminum. And I don't think
> they did it for weight savings. Maybe cost savings?
>
> And for the most part, the VAST majority of wires I've worked with were
> copper, or an alloy that was mostly copper. As I recall, back int the 70s,
> they had a disasterous experiment using aluminum core wiring for homes.
> The result was a lot of melted wires where they met copper termininals.
>
> If it's a super-important installation, we find gold contacts which I
> believe is the BEST conductor of electiricty, but to the best of my
> knowledge, nobody has ever made a radiator of gold.
>
> So I know we have some scientists on this list, what's the scoop? Why does
> aluminum loose to copper for conducting heat ( and electiricy ) but wins (
> I think ) over copper for dissipating heat? Is it simply a cost issue?
> Cost and strength?
>
> Just curious....
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