On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 9:43 PM, David Roberson <dlrober...@aol.com> wrote:
It would be a miracle to find that the temperature exactly matched what is > expected according to the Stephan-Boltzman equation. > I get that the preconditions for the Stephan-Boltzman equation were not met, technically, since the device is not a blackbody (e.g., painted with black refractory coating) and that there is an error term that is being raised to the fourth power. My questions are: what are the implications? Would the Stephan-Boltzman equation provide a lower bound for the true power, or an upper bound, or something else? How far off would the Stephan-Boltzman equation be in practice? I get the sense that it would be a minor error term and that professionals in this field would not be too hesitant to use the equation in a context such as the Lugano test. I'm starting to wonder whether the emissivity problem is primarily an academic one. Eric
