In a very old tale, a nymph, a simple imaginary woodland creature, is walking through the forest in a snowstorm. She meets a traveler wandering lost and cold. The nymph feels sorry for the man and invites him to her home for lunch. The man accepts, then sits by the nymph’s fire, blowing on his fingers to warm them.
The nymph asks the man what he is doing. She’s very impressed when she hears the man can warm himself that way. Lunch is served. The man blows on his soup and tells the nymph that he is cooling it down.
The nymph is astonished. How can the same mouth, she asks, blow both hot and cold? Angered at the man’s double dealing, she drives him back out into the forest.
Because the nymph is imaginary, and the tale is set in a long-ago time, the nymph does not know about the relationship between kinetic and thermal energy. How could analyzing that relationship have helped the nymph and saved the lost man from being sent back out into the storm?
(2 points)
Analyzing the relationship between kinetic and thermal energy could have helped the nymph understand that the man blowing on his fingers to warm them was not an act of deception. By blowing on his fingers, the man was increasing the kinetic energy of the air molecules around his fingers. This increase in kinetic energy transferred heat to his cold fingers, warming them up.
Similarly, when the man blew on his soup to cool it down, he was increasing the kinetic energy of the air molecules around the soup. This increase in kinetic energy caused the hot soup to transfer heat to the air, thus cooling down.
If the nymph had known about the relationship between kinetic and thermal energy, she would have understood that the man was not deceiving her but rather using a natural process to warm and cool things. This understanding could have prevented her anger and allowed her to show empathy and kindness to the man by letting him stay and warm up in her home instead of sending him back out into the storm.