"...Imagine what would happen if you took a Thanksgiving turkey piping hot from the oven and immediately placed it in a freezer. (Consider a perfect freezer--one that can remove heat instantly and always stay at its set temperature.) Initially the turkey would be at the same temperature throughout (assuming that you had roasted it for sufficiently long). Only a very thin skin would immediately take on the temperature of the freezer. But soon, the outer layers of turkey meat would cool as heat diffused outward, even though the center retained its initial oven-like temperature. Eventually, of course, everything including the stuffing would cool off; that is, the temperature inside your turkey would depend both on the distance from the surface and on the time elapsed since you placed it in the freezer."Previous post:
--Philip C. England, Peter Molnar, and Frank M. Richter, "Kelvin, Perry and the Age of the Earth," American Scientist, volume 95 number 4, p. 342 (2007)
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