Law of Thermodynamics

[bulmabriefs144]

(AKA Space Issues)

I'm not a physics major, so I'm not sure which one. But it's the one that dictates that if you have a heater and a door wide open, heat will flow out of the room, and disperse, and pretty much you can't heat the whole entire house, because it spreads too thin.

So, yea, today I get in some big argument with my mom guilt tripping me into opening this room because she's cold and wants the doors all open. I offer my upstairs heater (which is fair, since I seldom use it). She instead pushes me into a corner by completely refusing to meet halfway, at which put I snap and start holding the door.

I'm apparently not just physically uncomfortable with this, this makes me psychologically uncomfortable. Something I can't put into words, like personal space, or feeling secure (the room is now more like a hallway, with air flowing through) to outright agoraphobia (if so, I have a pretty mild case, I can go outside but prefer to stay close to home, just certain things make me uneasy like speaking in an auditorium).



Also, for reference, the (rough) layout of the house. Heater is in family room, she wants it in her bedroom, meaning it has to spread through two rather large rooms to get her even a little warmer, making everyone cold in the process. Meh, the diagram's slightly wrong, I looked around.

In any case, she has a tiny room with a space heater. Close your **** door, and stop making other people suffer because you can't learn to care for yourself!

 

[Stranger]

This is kind of funny - love the thread name "Thermodynamics"!

Why not just buy another little heater for your room? I had a similar problem with my roommates keeping the house at too low a temperature (and my room gets the coldest cos it's on the north side and exposed to 2 outside walls) - after a month of shivering and sleeping in layers of sweaters, I bought a really nice, quiet heater with a built-in thermostat for $50.

Your mom trying to force you to keep your room open is unreasonable. Everyone has a right to privacy!

 

[perfanoff]

Two dining rooms and a two-story house? Your family must be well-off

You're right in that one. Asking you to keep your door open is pretty much an invasion of privacy.

 

[9006]

So your mom whats the rooms open to the one heater can heat two rooms?

From what you said about the size of the rooms, this would be quite time consuming and impractical to heat these rooms. It sounds like you want physics to back up your argument

Heat is something that always rises, but it also radiates, so you can always feel it's presents, but when you turn some heating on, you're literally heating the top of the room first, and if doors are open it's going too filter out into the next room (that's not taking air movement into consideration) and never heat the current room after it reaches a certain point.

Think of he heat as very thin smoke heading to the ceiling, then once i gets to the open door's level, it will "fall" out into the other room; but like I said it radiates the heat and does heat the air around it but it will get to a point where it can't heat it further because your loosing as much as the source is producing.

It's possible to heat these two rooms like this, but it would take some considerable time - especially by the sounds of the size of the rooms, plus if you opened another door, you'd be reducing the temperature further by "letting the heat out".

Wow I rambled on there; so I think it would be better to just get another heater. The End

 

[kamya]

Space heaters are not meant to heat large areas. If I open my door it is almost instant how fast the heat leaves. There is no point trying to get it to heat two rooms with lots of space in between them. It won't work.

 

[perfanoff]

depends on the power of a heater - if it's 1-2 kW, it may work.