It's well-established in physics that black or dark-colored objects radiate heat faster and more effectively than light-colored objects.

So, in almost every building that uses steam heat, why are the radiators painted silver or some other very light color?

It's well-established in physics that black or dark-colored objects radiate heat faster and more effectively than light-colored objects.

This is not true...
only dark objects radiate heat faster, but these objects are different for various frequencies of radiation. For light these dark objects are dark-colored, for the freqeuncies of the heat from the radiator all colors that are used are dark, so it doesn´t matter what color you use.

Posted by bart on 2002-12-04 09:55:45