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Conditions: there is a steel plate insulated at the bottom and facing the clear night sky, the ambient air temperature is 2°C, the cosmic microwave background radiation is 3K, and the convective heat transfer coefficient is 10 formula. My job is to calculate the temperature of the steel plate at thermal equilibrium. The steel plate doesn't have given dimensions.

I've used formula for the convective heat transfer, and formula for the radiative heat transfer. Using 0.8 as the emissivity of steel, formula yields -22.158°C which is close enough to the textbook's answer of -20.9°C. This textbook has provided wrong answers multiple times in the past, so I don't fully trust it and this answer doesn't seem right to me.

Attempts to calculate in Kelvin have resulted in even more unlikely answers. Is -20°C plausible? Or where did I go wrong?

Edited to add calculations:

formula

formula

formula

My calculator puts out: formula as the solution.

Miya
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I get a value closer to -17.40 C = 255.75 K using an iterative solution (manually in Excel).

$Q_C = 10*(2-(-17.40)) = 194 \, W/m^2$

$Q_r = 0.8*5.67\times10^{-8}*((-17.40+273.15)^4-(3)^4) = 194.06 \, W/m^2$

Note that convection can use either C or K but radiation must use K.

Since -17.4 C satisfies both equations, the answer in the textbook is wrong.

JohnHoltz
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