Acquisition of a Laser Flash Apparatus to simultaneously measure thermal diffusivity and heat capacity from 173 to 773 K

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The flow of heat affects everyday activities such as cooking food, and is important to engineering problems such as manufacturing small cell phones that do not overheat. This award will provide funding for a new laser flash apparatus for determining heat flow. This new instrument will add to the infrastructure needed to advance fundamental issues in Earth and other physical sciences. It will have many practical applications to problems involving heat transfer.This award funds the acquisition of laser flash apparatus, which will improve the database on heat transport, further understanding of dynamic processes over a wide temperature range, and advance thermal models used to address diverse problems in Earth and planetary science. Problems possible to address include cooling of dust grains in meteorites, crystallization and evolution of plutons, dissipation of friction during plate motions, melting of the core, and deducing the thermal structure and evolution of rocky and ice planetary bodies. These new data will permit addressing the thermal structure and evolution of Solar System objects and exoplanets. Accurate heat flow data also bear on engineering problems, since ceramics and glasses are closely related, and sometimes identical, to the materials being examined.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.