What happens to the cavity inside an object if the temperature is increased?

Question

BlackTom AI · Accepted Answer

To approach the question, I’ll consider how temperature affects a solid with a cavity inside. When temperature rises, most solids undergo thermal expansion, meaning they increase in size in all dimensions to a first approximation.

Option a: It becomes larger. If the surrounding material expands, the boundaries of the cavity (which are part of the material) move outward from the center. As a result, the cavity volume increases. This aligns with the general idea of uniform thermal expansion causing internal spaces to enlarge.

Option b: It does not change. This would be true only if there were no thermal expansion at all, which isn’t the case for most materials. Since solids typically expand with temperature, assuming no change would ignore the basic physics of thermal expansion.

Option c: It becomes larger or smaller depending on the size of the cavity. While intuition might hint at a dependence on geometry, the fundamental behavior due to linear thermal expansion is uniform: the cavity walls tend to move outward as the material expands, so the cavity generally increases in size; there isn’t a universal scenario where the cavity always shrinks for all sizes.

Option d: It becomes smaller. This would imply the material contracts with heating, which contradicts the common property of thermal expansion in most substances. Only materials with negative thermal expansion or specific conditions would do this, which isn’t the default expectation here.

In summary, the standard consequence of increasing temperature in a typical solid with an internal cavity is that the cavity enlarges due to the overall expansion of the surrounding material.

UCIC 202503 PHYS101 Quiz 6

What happens to the cavity inside an object if the temperature is increased?

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