In a room there are two completely identical metal balls. One is lying on a table and the other is hanging on a cable attached to the ceiling. At the same moment, 1 Joule of heat energy is applied to each of them. Immediately after that, the balls are perfectly insulated, such that absolutely no heat transfer is possible.
Which one is the coldest?

(In reply to Another guess (solution?) by ajosin)

I believe that this is the answer sought after by Hugo.

But I'm curious as to how the balls become perfectly insulated afterwards because air conducts heat. This means that the balls have to be covered by some insulating material. But this may affect the answer because the material and the ball will expand at different rates. Although the amount of expansion is small, the material may crack if the metal expands more.

Posted by np_rt on 2005-04-06 02:07:38