- #1
waltl
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Hi. Often, when I am a tour guide at the Museum of Glass, Tacoma,WA. glassblowing shop. I get a question for which I don't have a definitive answer. I thought someone might know.
The question is "why don't the glassblowing pipes(steel tubes, 4.5 feet long, .75" wide) get too hot to hold"
Some of the tour guides say that it is the stainless steel which has a relatively low thermal conductivity(which it does), but that can't be the whole story since stainless pipes are relatively new and that doesn't account for at least 1900 years of glassblowing.
I tell them it is a combination of two things. One the shape of the pipe which has a high surface area to mass ratio so it radiates heat efficiently, the other is that once a pipe head is covered in glass it is to some extent insulated from the heat of the gloryhole.
Which is a bigger factor in the cooling of the handle end of the pipe? Conduction or convection from the surface?
What's your take??
PS. Do you know of anyone who has addressed this question experimentally?
Thanks for your help.
The question is "why don't the glassblowing pipes(steel tubes, 4.5 feet long, .75" wide) get too hot to hold"
Some of the tour guides say that it is the stainless steel which has a relatively low thermal conductivity(which it does), but that can't be the whole story since stainless pipes are relatively new and that doesn't account for at least 1900 years of glassblowing.
I tell them it is a combination of two things. One the shape of the pipe which has a high surface area to mass ratio so it radiates heat efficiently, the other is that once a pipe head is covered in glass it is to some extent insulated from the heat of the gloryhole.
Which is a bigger factor in the cooling of the handle end of the pipe? Conduction or convection from the surface?
What's your take??
PS. Do you know of anyone who has addressed this question experimentally?
Thanks for your help.